USB Flash drive lifespan of data ?

[Fif23]

Hey there ! I was wondering if there is a difference in the reliability of the data cells on USB flash drives that use conventional chips, vs the ones that use "MLC" chips. For example, Sandisk Ultra, vs Corsair GS Voyager.
And beyond that, those with the actual SSD controllers such as the Corsair GTX, are they even more reliable ?

I always buy those 15 dollar Kingston ones and more than 5 of them were already ruined after 2 years of writing and reading. If I invest 100-150$ in a good MLC component flash USB, will they hold for much more than a couple years or is it a waste of money ?

 

[FordGT90Concept]

It's the writing that damages them. As long as there aren't many writes, the data should last indefinitely.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory#Write_endurance
SLC is apparently the most durable. NOR is more durable than NAND. NOR capacity is low though and so is its performance.

Maybe want to consider portable HDDs? You must be subjecting them to a lot of writes.

 

[eidairaman1]

Best bet, double or triple redundant backup

 

[jboydgolfer]

I have ROMs from years ago for the kids nintendo DS. that's got to be close to 15 years ago that I put the data on those drives. As mentioned however, use equals wear

 

[Solaris17]

I run a fleet of corsair GTX drives with live environments for my technicnans. They were instated jan of last year. They get brutalized with reads and writes I have the environment automatically TRIM the drives and have not had a failure yet.

I also ran over one of them with several cars for testing and I use it to this day as my engineering drive. its currently right next to me.

 

[Fif23]

eidairaman1 do you have experience with Mdisc ?

 

[Sasqui]

Mdisc

There was a dicsussion here about Mdiscs a while back. I googled and here's PC Worlds take: https://www.pcworld.com/article/293...ewed-your-data-good-for-a-thousand-years.html

BTW, They seem to have stolen TPU's moniker logo!

Anyway... regarding the life of a flash drive is also dependent on the quality... and like @FordGT90Concept mentioned the specific flash tech. I've had a cheap USB drive literally start smoking when it was plugged in. No damage to the USB port or PC thankfully.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Yeah, PC World was like that for a while and it drives me nuts. It's hard to tell TPU from PC World now.

 

[qubit]

I run a fleet of corsair GTX drives with live environments for my technicnans. They were instated jan of last year. They get brutalized with reads and writes I have the environment automatically TRIM the drives and have not had a failure yet.

I also ran over one of them with several cars for testing and I use it to this day as my engineering drive. its currently right next to me.

That's a baptism of fire!

I had one of their high performance drives too, until I lost it some time back.

 

[jboydgolfer]

I also ran over one of them with several cars for testing and I use it to this day

 

[Solaris17]

That's a baptism of fire!

I had one of their high performance drives too, until I lost it some time back.

Sedans mostly.

Toyota Matrix, Acura RSX and a 2500HD they really are tanks. The sides held on by some kind of epoxy.

The tools are imaged. So when a drive "breaks" (via software install etc (they are live environments)) instead of fixing the drive its encouraged to simply image it back. so the drives take LOTS of data. the image write is atleast 18GB.

Here you go.

I am not embellishing when I say the drives are used ALOT, though im not 100% sure that reading is correct. will double check tomorrow.

Thats my engineering drive though. my techs drives have far more power on and hour counts.

 

[Jetster]

flash memory is not meant for back up

Jesus the Voyager GTX is not cheap. Solaris17 you a hand model on the side?

 

[Deleted member 50521]

I have a Kingston drive from ~12 yrs ago. Still going strong.

Now we are on this topic. Does anyone know any particular app that scans USB flash drive for health report and etc?

 

[Solaris17]

flash memory is not meant for back up

Jesus the Voyager GTX is not cheap. Solaris17 you a hand model on the side?

For the right someone ill be whatever you want.

I have a Kingston drive from ~12 yrs ago. Still going strong.

Now we are on this topic. Does anyone know any particular app that scans USB flash drive for health report and etc?

Depends entirely on the controller. However for basic drives you can try check flash

 

[eidairaman1]

eidairaman1 do you have experience with Mdisc ?

I do not but @Sasqui gave a pretty good Link, very informative. I have a BDXL drive myself from 2014 by Pioneer, hopefully I can start using MDISKs along with DVDs and place them into vaccum pelican cases with dessicant packs and vaccum seal bags...

 

[SamirD]

I just read about Mdisks. Funny that this exists when Mitsui made 100year archive grade media decades ago. I have several of those disks still working fine.

 

[delshay]

I do not but @Sasqui gave a pretty good Link, very informative. I have a BDXL drive myself from 2014 by Pioneer, hopefully I can start using MDISKs along with DVDs and place them into vaccum pelican cases with dessicant packs and vaccum seal bags...

I have the latest Pioneer drive BDR-S11J-X imported from Japan. I also need to start doing back-ups on this drive, but currently all back-up is done on a Samsung 2TB drive internally connected to a USB port.

 

[RejZoR]

There is some NAND data retention issues if you don't ever plug it in for like 10+ years. But I don't know specifics, I just vaguely heard about it...

 

[Glaring_Mistake]

Here you go.

I am not embellishing when I say the drives are used ALOT, though im not 100% sure that reading is correct. will double check tomorrow.

Thats my engineering drive though. my techs drives have far more power on and hour counts.

I think however that it might be like with my Corsair Voyager GTX that the drive reports writes in MB which CDI reports as writes in GB meaning that writes are hugely inflated in CDI.

Screenshot of my Voyager GTX's SMART:

As you can see it's supposedly seen more than 2PB of writes and that's despite the fact that I'm a consumer and that it isn't used very often.

 

[verycharbroiled]

ive put several of mine through the wash several times. still good, just let em dry out for a week or so.