Can a USB thumbdrive "wear out"?

Read the article that everyone's commenting on.
Subscribe to the RSS Feed for comments on this article.

One other issue with USB thumb drives. The connector on the end is a high stress point. There are reported cases where it breaks internally. When that happens, your data is inaccessible!

I recently blogged about this and had a good amount of feedback from readers regarding the debatable lifespans of flashdrives with some of them saying that most modern USB drives had algorithms which were intelligent enough to spread out the usage patterns, and also separate bad sectors to minimise the chances of the flashdrive completely dying anytime too soon. Check it out here:

http://friedbeef.blogspot.com/2006/05/can-usb-thumbdrive-wear-out.html

Hi,

I need some guidance and introduction into using USBs for carrying my application. The application that I am developing would be loaded on a thumb drive without actually having to upload anything on the host computer. With an internet connection, all the data written to the thumb drive should be transferred to a server database.. Any help will be appreciated.

What you're suggesting isn't that difficult. Just minimize writes to the USB drive. I'm not sure what other pointers you might be looking for.

Hi,

I am new to the world of portable applications on USBs.So I need a little guidance.I am exploring of developing a portable application on a thumbdrive, which can be connected to a computer and can transfer data to a server database. It would be a standalone application probably developed in java.

Now, I have been going through a lot of articles on the internet. They talk about thumb drive, U3, Ceedo. What would be the best option?can you tell em teh pros and cons of all these options available and what would be the best for my kind of application.

Thanks

Annie

If you are able to format your USB drive with NTFS (not all systems support this), data on the stick will be "safer". Note I said safer; safer then FAT or FAT32 storage.

Hardware failure cannot be circumvented; however good care of the USB stick will assist in "increasing" it's life span.

Ordinary USB stick drives will "crash" sooner then an average hard drive. A backup copy, or rather copies, on various media is or are essential.

Personally, I backup critical managable data onto 2 different computer drives (on different computers), also to DVD and items small enough also get zipped and emailed to myself.

my thumbdrive cannot be detected by the usb port. i cannot access my files. all my school projects saved in it are totally inaccessible now. pls help. i need them urgently.

Is there any software that will test a thumb drive for remaining life / failing cells / etc?

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Not that I'm aware of. You could try CHKDSK /R on it, perhaps.

Leo
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (MingW32)

iD8DBQFF44KyCMEe9B/8oqERAnMoAJ4qwLk+s3Tdj4lUMNTpjmCAydFM8gCeN8hk
TjelzGXS2LfI0L3AeM8e1TM=
=EQch
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

I have a USB thumb drive problem. Just bought a new one 3 weeks ago. I cannot move files to it any longer, the message comes up as "the directory or file cannot be created." I can move the file into a subfolder already on the drive but cannot move it into the drive itself without putting into a subfolder. Also, I cannot rename a subfolder in the drive. I had the same problem on a previous USB drive, bought a new one and all was OK for about 3 weeks, then it happened to the new drive also.
thanks, Tri

To post a comment on "Can a USB thumbdrive "wear out"?", please return to that article's main page.