>My flash drive arrived, but apparently damaged in some way. Neither my
>Desktop nor Notebook computer can recognize it at all. The light on the
>thumb drive comes on when I plug it in, but the device is not recognized at
>all.
Larry,
Don't know if this is the problem, but I had a USB drive that suddenly stopped working on my work computer (light came on, but computer couldn't "see" it) but still worked fine on my home computer. The problem was that multiple network drives at work. The flash drive was being assigned a drive already in use by the network. The solution was to manually assign a designation to the flash drive. After that it worked fine. But our IT guy said that it could randomly happen again.
Mark J. Myers
Electronic Records Specialist
Public Records Division
Kentucky Dept. for Libraries & Archives
300 Coffee Tree Road, P.O. Box 537
Frankfort KY 40602-0537
Phone: 502.564.8300 ext. 244
----- Original Message ----
From: Larry Medina <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2007 5:15:37 PM
Subject: Re: [RM] OT-ish - Flash drive stability and longevity
On 1/31/07, Colgan, Julie J. <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> <Has anyone experience, information or links to share regarding the
> stability and/or longevity of flash drives> snip
>
> This is a timely question for me as I just rec'd my ARMA Conference
> flash drive today (!!!) and hope that, due to the extended delay in
> receiving it, the data on it hasn't already expired!
>
> Seriously though, I do find the question intriguing and trust that
> Larry, at least, will have some good thoughts to share ...
Ahem... Did I hear someone call my name? =)
Okay... interesting you'd bring this up, because as you know, I was one of
the folks who had waited and waited for their flash drive from Conference
and finally received it. And I didn't want to be a party pooper, so I
hadn't bothered to post this, but SEEING AS SOMEONE ASKED (thank you Julie
=) ) I'll speak up.
My flash drive arrived, but apparently damaged in some way. Neither my
Desktop nor Notebook computer can recognize it at all. The light on the
thumb drive comes on when I plug it in, but the device is not recognized at
all. And NO... I'm **NOT** going to bring it to work and connect it here to
see if it works =)
While my testing parameters aren't severely rigid (no comments form the
Peanut Gallery, please!) I have used thumb drives quite a bit over the past
6-7 years and I own them from 8mb up to 1gb in capacity. Most are 64mb and
I use and reuse these a LOT... sending files back and forth to my daughter
in college and "sneaker netting" files between my other daughter's computer
and her buddies. And yes, we do have a wireless network in our house, but
I don't want to degrade the performance while transferring files between
machines... and NO I don't have a dedicated server.
I've had to pitch out 3 or 4 of them because they seemed to either take
longer to load or empty, and I don't know if the "flash memory" degrades
over time from being written to and erased repeatedly, but if you think
about the price of them now (last night I saw a fishbowl of 256mb drives for
$8 each!) it stands to reason that they've got a built in obsolescence.
I recall when they first came out (and still were sort of expensive), I used
to take stuff on a thumb drive AND a CD when I traveled to do presentations,
JUST IN CASE... and I did have one apparently get "zapped" while flying from
SF to KC once. Let's here it for redundancy! WooHoo!!!
So, as a matter of routine practice, after I copy "stuff" (a technical term
I learned from an M$ engineer) to a thumb drive, I always check the
directory, then try to open at least one file, and beyond that' it's a leap
of faith. And I ALWAYS properly "eject" the device, because I actually
think failing to do this CAN result in damaged information.
Next step for me? One of the USB drives with the 1" disk instead of flash
memory. I hear they're a little slower, but you can get them from 1gb up to
40gb now... and while I think trying to store anything over 4gb in this
manner is a bit goofy, it's tough to beat the prices you're seeing.
Not an endorsement of this brand or site
http://www.edgetechcorp.com/storage/mini-hard-drive.asp but $60-$133 for
4-12gb???
Larry
--
Larry Medina
Danville, CA
RIM Professional since 1972
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