Memory management in an image capturing device

1. An image capturing device, comprising:

a processor;

at least one interface communicating with said processor and capable of transferring images out of said image capturing device; and

a memory communicating with said processor and capable of storing a plurality of records, with a record including image data and image status data indicating whether a copy of the image has been transferred out of the device;

wherein said processor is configured to determine whether said Memory includes any archived images as indicated by said status data and is configured to replace one or more archived images in said memory with a newly captured image when insufficient free space exists in said memory to store said newly captured image; and

wherein said processor is configured to disable image capture if said memory is full and said memory does not contain any archived images.

2. The device of claim 1 , wherein said at least one interface is a communication interface capable of transmitting a stored image to an external device.

3. The device of claim 1 , wherein said at least one interface is a USB cable interface.

4. The device of claim 1 , wherein said at least one interface is a removable memory medium interface capable of transmitting a stored image to a removable memory medium.

5. The device of claim 1 , wherein said processor is capable of replacing one or more archived images in said memory with a newly captured image when said memory is incapable of storing said newly captured image, with the replacing step comprising replacing an oldest archived image as indicated by a date/time information in a date/time storage cell of a record in said memory.

6. The device of claim 1 , wherein said memory comprises an internal memory.

7. The device of claim 1 , wherein said memory comprises a removable memory medium.

8. A memory management method for a memory of an image capturing device, comprising the steps of:

transferring a copy of an image out of said memory during an image archiving operation;

marking said image in said memory as an archived image;

automatically replacing an archived image with a newly captured image if said memory lacks sufficient free space to store said newly captured image; and

automatically disabling image capture if said memory is full and said memory does not contain any archived images.

9. The method of claim 8 , wherein the transferring step comprises transferring said copy to an external computer device.

10. The method of claim 8 , wherein the transferring step comprises transferring said copy to a removable memory medium.

11. The method of claim 8 , wherein the marking step comprises changing a status variable in an associated status storage cell to an archived state.

12. A memory management method for a memory of an image capturing device, comprising the steps of:

determining whether said memory is capable of storing an additional image;

storing a captured image in said memory if sufficient free space exists in said memory;

determining if said memory contains at least one archived image, if said memory is not capable of storing said captured image; and

replacing said at least one archived image with said captured image if said memory is not capable of storing said captured image and if said memory contains said at least one archived image,

wherein an image capture is disabled if said memory is full and if said memory does not contain at least one archived image.

13. The method of claim 12 , wherein the method is performed upon a press of a shutter button of said image capturing device.

14. The method of claim 12 , wherein the method is performed upon completion of an image capture.

15. The method of claim 12 , wherein the step of determining additional image storage capability includes inspecting status variables corresponding to each image stored in said memory.

16. The method of claim 12 , wherein an archived image comprises a captured image a copy of which has been transferred to a removable memory in said image capturing device.

17. The method of claim 15 , further comprising the step of changing a status variable of a replaced archived image to a non-archived status.

18. The method of claim 12 , wherein an archived image comprise a captured image a copy of which has been transferred to an external memory connected to said image capturing device.

19. The method of claim 12 , wherein an archived image comprise a captured image a copy of which has been transferred to an external memory connected to said image capturing device and to a removable memory in said image capturing device.