In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Your Name wrote:
In article , Doc O'Leary
wrote:
For your reference, records indicate that
(Ant) wrote:
Either I'm having bad luck or USB flash drives suck even with various
sizes (e.g., 512 MB to 32 GB), well known brand names (e.g., SanDisk),
and cheap/free ones (SP [a few years] and Patriot [had it since
10/3/2015]). They don't seems like they don't last longer than a year. I
keep them in my drawers, wallets, etc.
Of course, anyone who remembers how unreliable floppy disks used to
be would treasure a one year life span.
I can't say I've ever had any real problems with floppy disks. I've
still got a huge pile of them (some magazine cover disks, some my own
disks). In fact, the biggest issue I've ever had with floppy disks is
the drive in my beige G3 dying and I didn't have the time nor equipment
to fix it, so I got an external USB one instead.
A large part of the issue many people had with floppy disks is due to
the way they treated them. Mine were and are always stored in boxes,
never simply thrown into bags or pockets alone.
I found that frequent erasures and writes of large files killed them
fairly fast, with just small writes to text files or the like they
served a good life, and for Read-Only use I've found they last very
well indeed.
The same goes for USB flash drives. I've seen people treating them
extremely badly.
I read online once a theory that it's usually the crystal (the
component in the metal can that has wire leads going to it)
that fails. Crystals are used in all sorts of things these days,
so it must be either poor quality, or some aspect of use, that would
make them more susceptable to failure in memory sticks specifically.
Modern thin, card-width, memory sticks seem to show that the
need for the traditionally large crystal package has been overcome.
Perhaps this has improved reliability? In any case, unlike the old
crystals, these modern integrated ones can't be easily replaced by
someone with a soldering iron.
The consequence of the crystal failing would usually be the memory
stick failing to be recognised by any computer. The data could well
be recovered if it were replaced afterwards.
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