Is it me or are there many unreliable USB flash drives?

Remembering how FAT32 would get lots of errors and need a fix after Win
98 crashes, I format all my sticks to NTFS.

It may wear them out a little faster, but I can't conceive of using FAT.

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In article , Doc O'Leary
wrote:


getting hot is not necessarily a failure.

some usb sticks run hot. others don't. most get warm. it's normal.

Normal or not, it can still be a contributing factor to failure. The
first iPod I got was a HD-based one, and if I left it attached to my
computer to use as a disk it would get *blazingly* hot. I did that
often enough that I have no doubt that it contributed to its drive
failure.

it was defective. hd ipods might get warm but never blazingly hot.

Likewise, if a particular thumb drive runs hot, maybe it isn¹t
designed to ³normally² be constantly attached. Nobody should make a
blanket assumption that they know what will and won¹t cause a
specific failure.

i'm not making a blanket assumption. i'm saying that a lot of usb flash
drives run warm, sometimes even hot, without any issue. it's not
unusual and not necessarily the reason why something might fail.

In article , Computer Nerd Kev
wrote:

A laptop, however, may have a separate power supply circuit for
the USB 5V. If this failed, and supplied too high a voltage, it
may not sevierely affect the normal operation of the computer.

no.

Yes. If the 5V supply circuit was built separately for use by
the relatively high current USB devices, it's failure (in this
way) would not stop the computer operating. In some cases it
might (I won't spend the time spelling it out), but if no USB
devices are connected, it won't.

usb devices are not 'relatively high current'.

usb originally specified a maximum of 500ma. the usb charging spec can
go to about 2a, and at 5v, is just 10w.

It is for a laptop with internal hardware designed to conserve power
consumption as much as possible for the longest possible battery
operation time.

nope. laptops can source 1-2a due to the popularity of portable hard
drives and smartphones.

A power-boosted USB hub with a faulty or incorrectly specified
mains adapter powering it could also be a culprit.

no hub was used.

Known now, yes.

it was known before.

OK, missed it. You did too based on your earlier reply to Ant.

nope.

the amount of current sourced is limited by what the device
negotiates from the host.

Current limiting only protects against an over-voltage situation
if the device requires more than the minimum current limit (500mA)
to be damaged. If an IC in the memory stick normally draws 20mA
at 5V, it may draw 28mA at 7V (this based on rough calculations:
5V / 0.02A = 250R 7V / 250R = 0.028A, but it proves the point),
however the IC may only be rated to sustain 5.5V, so it may be
damaged while only consuming 28mA. The rest of the components
in the memory stick will also be drawing additional power, but
you see that the total power draw is not increased enough to
hit the 500mA maximum if the stick normally draws, say, 100mA?

usb devices don't work that way.

OK, so the device can specify roughly the current it needs via
the USB protocol, which if you're lucky will be respected by the
computer hardware.

luck has absolutely *nothing* to do with it.

the usb spec *requires* that a usb peripheral device use *up* *to*
100ma and then negotiate higher current requirements, which the usb
host can deny.

anything else is not compliant with the usb spec.

Some cheap designs aren't, that's the luck.

luck has nothing to do with it. don't buy crap. simple as that.

and if something is out of spec, anything goes.

The current specification isn't accurate
enough to prevent damage though, for the reason shown above.
The current increase as voltage is increased isn't great enough
to trip the limiting.

no.

Again, YES. You're arguments aren't very convincing.

however, they're correct.

Another possibility, if you only ever use one USB port (or a group
of similarly affected ones) for testing these memory sticks, is
that a high resistance in the computer's USB socket is causing
the _socket_ to heat up, and the heat is being transferred
to the drives themselves via the USB connector. Here, not only
the heat, but also the coresponding reduced power to the memory
stick, may induce irrecoverable write errors or other failures.

unlikely.

Such failures are known to occour due to strain on solder joints
causing them to break, or joints that weren't correctly soldered
in the first place.

broken joints don't get hot. they simply don't work.

Sometimes they simply form a high resistance. Look it up - dry
joints.

they're commonly called cold solder joints, and will cause a device to
fail not get hot.

They're commonly called as many things as USB memory sticks are, just
look up their failure modes and you'll see that they can get hot. It's
the same as a power plug with corroded/tarnished contacts getting hot.

nope. they're almost always called cold solder joints, and these days,
it's exceptionally rare on mass produced products.

It is a less common failure, but it's also
uncommon to consume large quantities of memory sticks.

it's not uncommon at all. memory sticks are cheap enough to be
considered disposable. sometimes they're even given away for free.

As I remember it, OP figures that he's bought good ones - hence
his confusion about the cause of the failure rate.

it wasn't due to heat.

Maybe not, but they were apparantly getting unusually hot - sounds
like a potential connection to me.

nope.

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage nospam wrote:

luck has nothing to do with it. don't buy crap. simple as that.

Which brands of USB flash drives aren't crap then? SanDisk? PNY?
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In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Ed Light wrote:
You might have a bad power supply or need to use a surge supressor.

Um, I used more than one computers (desktops and (laptop/notebook)s.
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In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Ed Light wrote:
Remembering how FAT32 would get lots of errors and need a fix after Win
98 crashes, I format all my sticks to NTFS.

It may wear them out a little faster, but I can't conceive of using FAT.

Even NTFS and HFS failed. :/
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In article , Ant
wrote:


luck has nothing to do with it. don't buy crap. simple as that.

Which brands of USB flash drives aren't crap then? SanDisk? PNY?

name brands.

In comp.sys.mac.hardware.storage nospam wrote:
In article , Ant
wrote:


luck has nothing to do with it. don't buy crap. simple as that.

Which brands of USB flash drives aren't crap then? SanDisk? PNY?

name brands.

I used name brands like SanDisk. :P
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On 10/24/2016 9:02 PM, Ant wrote:


Even NTFS and HFS failed. :/

ewww!

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For your reference, records indicate that
nospam wrote:

it was defective. hd ipods might get warm but never blazingly hot.

It was operating fine *for how it was designed*. Which was to
*briefly* use the HD to transfer music either to sync with the
computer or into RAM to play it. It was *not* designed to be
constantly used as a Firewire drive.

Stop talking like you’re an authority on all things. You come
across like just another nameless idiot when you do that.

i'm not making a blanket assumption. i'm saying that a lot of usb flash
drives run warm, sometimes even hot, without any issue. it's not
unusual and not necessarily the reason why something might fail.

You have no idea what may or may not be “unusual� for any particular
device when you haven’t even seen the manufacturer’s specs. Keep
quiet on such matters until you educate yourself.

--
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