How Long Should a Thumb Drive Last?

[Rob Williams]

For a couple of reasons, I tend to keep about five or six thumb drives around for the sake of having non-disc copies of bootable software, and also a quick place to backup small, but important data. OS-wise, I keep a thumb drive with a Windows 7 install on it at all times, along with Gentoo, and Ubuntu. Then I have Ultimate Boot CD and also Acronis True Image. I prefer disc-less versions for the sake of both performance and the fact that not all of our test PCs have an optical drive - it's the ultimate solution, as far as I'm concerned.

Read the rest of our post and then discuss it here!

 

[2Tired2Tango]

"He's dead, Jim!"

If you have a formatting tool that will "reset to factory condition" you could try that.

I have a mess of the Datatravelers that I use with Windows 7 and I keept getting lost chains on them until I reset them to their factory states...

But then, it also depends on usage... I stuff mine into a port about once a week to backup transient files. They're written to far more often than they're read, but 4 years into it and still going strong...

 

[Rob Williams]

"He's dead, Jim!"

If you have a formatting tool that will "reset to factory condition" you could try that.

I am not sure if a factory reset tool exists for the drive, but I will have a look. What I have done is overwrite the partition table, effectively making the drive newer than new (not pre-formatted), and that didn't help anything. While I could format it at that point in Linux, Windows was unable to.

 

[marfig]

Maybe bad luck, Rob.

I have a 2GB Sony, for instance, that I actually just found lying on a park bench 3 years ago. It's still doing its thing.

 

[2Tired2Tango]

I am not sure if a factory reset tool exists for the drive, but I will have a look. What I have done is overwrite the partition table, effectively making the drive newer than new (not pre-formatted), and that didn't help anything. While I could format it at that point in Linux, Windows was unable to.

In windows...
Computer -> right click the drive -> Format -> Restore Factory Defaults. The result is a new partition table and fat-32 but I believe (without knowing for certain) there are some config bits reset in the process.

I've gotten a few semi-dead thumb drives going that way.

 

[Rob Williams]

In windows...
Computer -> right click the drive -> Format -> Restore Factory Defaults. The result is a new partition table and fat-32 but I believe (without knowing for certain) there are some config bits reset in the process.

I've gotten a few semi-dead thumb drives going that way.

Oh, right. Yes, I've done that more than once as well, and while sometimes I can get the drive to function, it doesn't for long. Half of the time if I try to format in Windows, it just fails =/

 

[2Tired2Tango]

Oh, right. Yes, I've done that more than once as well, and while sometimes I can get the drive to function, it doesn't for long. Half of the time if I try to format in Windows, it just fails =/

Thing is ... don't format... use the reset button...

 

[Rob Williams]

Thing is ... don't format... use the reset button...

Simply clicking on 'Restore device defaults' does nothing though - it's meant to be used in conjunction with formatting, hence it being found under the format tool. Nonetheless, I click that option every time I forgot a drive due to habit, including this one, and it still doesn't work. It seems usable, but it's not (proven by actually copying a file over).

When I clear the partition table in Linux, that's as pure as a device like this can get, and even then, it refuses to work after-the-fact. As I mentioned in the post, it can't even be benchmarked due to something being inherently wrong with it.

I tried finding a restore tool, but none can be found. I'm sure if one did exist, it'd do nothing different than what I've tried so far.

I'm quite certain this one has some sort of hardware issue, though that seems odd. I have used it on many occasions, thus putting many write cycles through it, but even so.

 

[2Tired2Tango]

Trash it.

 

[Rob Williams]

Trash it.

I am running some last tests in Windows and if nothing comes from that, trash it will go.

I am still a little confused about you saying to reset the drive, though. Are you still on XP, and does clicking the 'Restore drive defaults' actually -do- something rather than just change the values in the drop-downs before a format takes place?

 

[2Tired2Tango]

I am running some last tests in Windows and if nothing comes from that, trash it will go.

I am still a little confused about you saying to reset the drive, though. Are you still on XP, and does clicking the 'Restore drive defaults' actually -do- something rather than just change the values in the drop-downs before a format takes place?

Win 7... click restore defaults then start... you get a fast format.... but I think it does more than just format the drive... Or at least it seems to because I've seen that "fix" half dead drives that wouldn't format...

 

[Rob Williams]

Win 7... click restore defaults then start... you get a fast format.... but I think it does more than just format the drive... Or at least it seems to because I've seen that "fix" half dead drives that wouldn't format...

To be honest, I don't think it does anything except set the default file system and sector sizes. When a partition table is recreated, you'll see the drive change itself in your "My Computer" as a result, but with the format tool here, the drive never changes (at least in my experience), meaning it's just a straight format.

If you were to change the file system itself, that might give a different result, I am not sure. I think the purest way to format a drive uses the same instructions as seen in our Windows 7 USB installation article:

select disk #
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format fs=ntfs
assign
exit

http://techgage.com/article/using_a_thumb_drive_to_install_windows_7/3

This didn't work for me either, though, heh. I'm about to chuck it out regardless though, it seems to work on occasion, but never to actually copy anything. Just glad I didn't lose anything on it, that's all that matters.

 

[Kougar]

I'm not entirely sure... I know multiple tables are required for any storage formatting to function, like that FAT uses both a directory entry table and a file allocation table, and these must reference each other for everything to work right. NTFS uses a master file table that appears to be more like a complex database than a collection of separate cross-referencing tables... but regardless formatting should reset all of those. I can't come up with anything to suggest regarding your drives, Rob.

I can say that I have never personally had a flash drive die on me. I remember in my college classes, two or three students would come to me and it sounded like the drives had died... but I still have my first several flash drives which I owned back in high school. A 256MB Lexar thumbdrive, then a 1GB Lexar thumbdrive... this thing.. I didn't use the 256MB drive much, but I really used the 1GB drive as a mobile toolbox and for high school / college work. It's sitting on the desk in front of me, currently full of music and installers I transfer around to offline systems. I have been using it extensively for menial transfer duty just so I wouldn't wear out my newest flash drive, but I'm not honestly sure if it even matters.

Lets see, in order of use my first was the 256MB Lexar, then the 1GB Lexar (which has survived Laundry cycles on numerous occasions, no less), a 4GB Emprex cheapie I got for Uni work, and lastly a 16GB OCZ Diesel I got for $16 back in... Black Friday 2008. Maybe I've just been upgrading before I can wear them out, but whatever the case I have all of them on my desk and all of them still work. I still had even used the 256MB drive to imitate a floppy disk, have it formatted as one to 1.44MB so it'll work on (at least some) really old systems. 16GB has been plenty of space though, so I plan to keep this drive until it does wear out.

This didn't work for me either, though, heh. I'm about to chuck it out regardless though, it seems to work on occasion, but never to actually copy anything. Just glad I didn't lose anything on it, that's all that matters.

Well that's good... NAND is still NAND, last I checked it is supposed to turn into ROM when it isn't able to complete any further writes, allowing anything on it to be still be read. I know of some people that just have their drives just die outright on them, but just as many others were able to read from the drives, they'd only get an error when attempting writes.