MEMORY CARD

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a memory card for accelerating the writing of data. SOLUTION: A memory card (1) comprises an erasable and writable nonvolatile memory (2) and a control circuit (5). The memory array of the above nonvolatile memory comprises an erasure table with a first flag to show whether or not the memory area is an empty area by every erasure unit. For example, when the number of memory areas in which data which can be erased are written reaches a certain number, the control circuit performs preliminary erasure control to preliminarily erase the data which can be erased from the memory areas corresponding to the first flag showing that the memory area is empty. Thus, the erasure processing is preliminarily performed to the empty memory area so that any necessity to insert erasure processing just before writing processing using the empty memory area can be decreased, and that the writing of data in the memory card can be accelerated. COPYRIGHT: (C)2005,JPO&NCIPI