[Bikers4Bush]

I can see the benefits. The only problem being it would seem the hardware guys aren't talking to the software guys.

Think about the advancements in hardware that occur over a 2 year period. That has to make the job for the guys writing the software tough when they aren't thinking about the hardware limitations initially.

[discostu]

They probably are but somebody probably forgot. Assume for a second it's because the flash card uses FAT with it's well documented file limit, probably at some point the hardware guys mentioned the flash card was using FAT but probably nobody thought about the implications of that, most users that go back to the FAT days were taught good file management techniques and probably never ran into the file limit (which remember isn't actually a bug, it's a documented design limitation), I've been using computers since DOS 3.1 and didn't run into the file limit until last year and only hit that because the software I test professionally can (if you configure it inefficiently) run massive quantities of files through the Windows print spooler, and if I'd setup that machine as NTFS instead of FAT32 I wouldn't have run into then either. You're not going to write your software to keep track of the number of files that's what an OS is for, keeping from running over the file limit is really a user thing that's system management and maintenance that on lean systems (which this would be to maximize storage capacity) is supposed to be done by hand.

In the end I'd gues this is something that didn't make the "to do" list of the operator sending instructions to the rover, somewhere on there was an entry to check free space and delete files as necessary, now a new entry just got penciled in.