Patent ID: 8861993

Claim:
An image forming apparatus comprising: a first storage unit that is a non-volatile and rewritable storage unit mounted on the control unit; a toner containing unit that contains toner to be used for an image forming operation, the toner containing unit including a second storage unit that is a non-volatile and rewritable storage unit mounted on the toner containing unit; a detecting unit that detects an amount of the toner remaining in the toner containing unit; a control unit configured to, count a number of times an image forming operation is performed by the image forming apparatus, store the number of times the image forming operation is performed as count information in the second storage unit mounted on the toner containing unit, the count information being persistent across replacements of the toner containing unit, and copy the count information from the second storage unit to the first storage unit, when the detecting unit detects that the amount of the toner remaining in the toner containing unit is below a threshold, wherein, the count information remains stored in the first storage unit, until the toner containing unit is replaced with a new toner containing unit.