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Question about flash drives

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d_byrnes
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Question about flash drives

I've read in some of the forums about how many write cycles flash memory can accept before beginning to deteriorate. My question is how does this generally translate into TIME? I don't own a PC yet, but plan to buy one within the next year. Meanwhile I'm using my flash drive with the PA apps for email, browsing, downloading, everything, doing so from Internet cafes. It gets pretty heavy use, 3-5 hours per day, sometimes constantly writing via eMule or uTorrent. So what I'm asking is what can I expect to be the approximate useful life span of my drive?

Darkbee
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Very difficult to say

It's impossible to answer with any great certainty. It's a bit like asking how long before a car breaks down? Nobody knows for sure.

There are lots of factors, as you've expressed usage is one of those factors, with quality of parts (memory) another key factor.

I would guess in your situation a couple of years, but then I could just as easily guess a couple of months and still be right.

Manufacturers usually specify an expected maximum number of write cycles for a drive, so you could calculate how many you perform on average per day and figure out how many days usage that would give you before you hit the max. Even then, there's no guarantees of course (and you'd somehow have to factor in prior usage). As you can see, this is far from an exact science.

Your best approach would be to consider Flash drives disposable and keep a backup of your Flash drive if at all possible. (e.g. periodically burn the contents of your flash drive to a CD or other media).

Soulmech
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I would give it maybe 2 years

I would give it maybe 2 years if it's a decent quality drive.

I'm not 100% sure about this, but I heard that larger drives (>8GB) deteriorate more quickly.

SWAG

Mir
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that guestamation is incorrect

i have a drive that has lasted since 2001. i have other thumb drives that are 6 years old and are still ticking. i also have a 3 year old 16gb drive that is still working.

I dont know how you came up with your 2 year lifespan dut it must be flawed. there are too many factors that can make a drive last longer or shorter.

d_byrnes
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This gives me at least a good

This gives me at least a good idea. I've had this drive for about 6 months now, so I should be okay for at least another 6-18 months. Thanks

Mir
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then agian you may be good for another 4 years too :)

see subject

NathanJ79
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Hard drive

Better to stick with hard drives for portable apps, and there are a few really good reasons why.

First, price per gigabyte. The biggest flash drives are 128GB AFAIK and they'll run you well over $100. Corsair's top-of-the-line Flash Voyager GTR only comes in 128GB and will run you $300. My Seagate Expansion Drive was $49.99 shipped from the Egg. You cannot beat that (get a 128GB flash drive for under $25) with flash. Don't go looking, it just won't happen.

Second, speed. The best flash drives top out around 30MB/s (read or write). This would be considered a damn good flash drive. Cheap flash drives are lucky to get a third of that. Your average Corsair, OCZ, or Patriot (good quality enthusiast flash drives) get around 25. But a cheap external hard drive can do 40-45. Yeah, my $50 hard drive is outperforming the best Corsair flash drive at a sixth the cost and with twice as much storage space.

Third, wear & tear. Flash drives and hard drives are two different animals altogether. A hard drive has metal platters which store data magnetically. Once written, the drive does not require constant power to retain data. Flash drives work more like the RAM in your computer. They store data, but the data is lost when power is lost. Flash drives get around the need for a power source by "flashing" the chip. This can only be done so many times, and when it can't be done anymore, your flash drive starts acting real stupid all of a sudden. And every time the drive is written to, that's a write cycle, that's a new flash. So when you have something like Portable Firefox which is constantly writing to the drive, so while you're just browsing the web, it's murdering the crap out of your drive giving your drive one heck of a workout. Meanwhile, hard drives are meant to run applications. Always have been.

I had a 4GB Corsair Readout, a pretty good drive... it lasted about 18 months. And I don't doubt that some of these guys here have drives that have lasted years and years. Stranger things have happened, but I still have them beat on speed and price per megabyte/gigabyte, so longevity isn't everything.

(It's only fair to point out that a flash drive, particularly a sturdy one like the Corsair Flash Voyager, will take a heck of a lot more abuse than any hard drive. These drives can be boiled, frozen, even run over by a regular car, and they still work. You can't do that with any hard drive. But they're also very easy to lose! Ever lose a cigarette lighter? A flash drive is the exact same size.)

d_byrnes
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Well, if I find that I´m

Well, if I find that I´m gonna be stuck in this situation for more than another 8 months, I probably WILL get an external HD. But for what I´m doing a flash drive is sufficient. And when I use Firefox, I copy the Firefox Portable directory to the desktop of the machine I´m using at the time, then copy it back to the flask drive when I´m finished.

NathanJ79
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If that's all you need

If that's all you need and you can afford it (or you just need a 16GB or smaller drive) a flash drive is OK, but you're already taking extra steps to get better performance out of the PortableApps ecosystem; you already know that running Portable Firefox from a hard drive is a lot smoother than running it from a flash drive. With an external hard drive, you don't need to take those steps. Got an Xbox 360? Turn that flash drive into a giant memory card -- that's what happened to mine.

Like so many others, I thought my flash drive was so cool when I first got one. But going from flash drive to portable hard drive... I just could never go back. (Also, minor point, while all external hard drives are external, generally, now, an external hard drive is the kind that needs its own power supply, where a portable hard drive does not. External hard drives come a heck of a lot bigger -- up to 2TB/2,000GB -- but having to plug them in is kind of a drag, I always thought.)

patrick013
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flash drives

The people at Kingston say their flash drives can be completely written to
and completely deleted once every day for 25 years. I'm having trouble with
mine lately, I have several I use (see post in this forum if any ideas) and
can't resolve it. They work good on LINUX 100%, no problem at all, but not on XP today so I don't think it's a wear and tear issue.

Speed hasn't been bad. There's just something about flash drives lately that is
really bottle-necking my usage of them lately. I don't think Windows likes flash drives today, maybe security updates effecting them.

A big hard drive would have to be even more heavy duty.

Cheers,

Patrick

d_byrnes
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According to Sandisk

Their Cruzer model (not the Micro Cruzer) is rated for 100000 write cycles. That really isn't very many. >My next one4 may be a KIngston, or just opt for a portable hard drive instead.

patrick013
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sandisk

Well that Sandisk Cruzer flash drive would last 273 years if calculated the same way Kingston does. The Kingston says 25
years. I'll bet they're all about the same...just a 1/2 inch
piece of circuit. They would all probably last over 20 years
with average usage according to Kingston and Sandisk's very
favorable specification.

patrick

Mir
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not too far off.

i have a 9 year old thumb drive that is still ticking.

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