USBs -what puts wear & tear on memory sticks

[jensenajob22]

I am told that USB are 'worn' when they are being used. anyone knows something about this?
Especially- what actions is most damaging to the stick.

Br.

[essellar]

Flash memory has a "write life". Without getting into the physics behind it, that means that you can only write data to the "cells" (the individual memory locations) so many times before the cells stop responding correctly. Reading data from the flash memory has almost no effect; you can often read data perfectly from flash memory that can't be written to anymore.

It's not writing more data to the key that does the damage, it's writing to the same cells. Like a hard drive, when you delete a file (normally), the file isn't really deleted, it's just "forgotten" (the index entry telling the system where to find the file is changed). Until the drive starts to get pretty full, new data is written to "fresh" locations. It's only when there isn't enough "fresh" space that the old space starts to get re-used.

So the overall picture is this: if you keep the USB key nearly full and change the files a lot, you will wear out the cells quicker. If the USB key is only ever partially full, or if you mostly read files from the key and rarely write to it, it should last quite a while. If you write once, then do nothing but read after that, the key will (theoretically) last until it's physically damaged. (That said, you should always have at least two copies of important data in two different places.)

You should note that the number of write cycles that flash can undergo has increased dramatically over the past few years, to the point that it is practical now to use flash-based solid-state disk drives (SSDs), even in high-activity data center servers. That doesn't necessarily mean that your $9.99 4GB USB key is going to be that reliable--there's a reason why a 128GB SSD costs more than 128GB worth of USB sticks--but it will probably be a lot better than the $150 256MB USB key that you could buy six or seven years ago.

[theone48]

As always, essellar proves to be a fountain of knowledge. I've noticed these memory devices have been getting smaller and smaller and bigger in capacity. Imagine 16 GB in a little MicroSD chip smaller than a fingernail? Unmentionable back in the day.

[Darkmere]

Heh ... I remember when they said a Computer would never use more than 640K Ram. My first Hard Drive was a 72 meg lol

[theone48]

ha ha Darkmere, my first 'computer', if you could call it that, had I think 100k memory. Can't find the manual right now and it's not written on the machine so can't verify. 25 years old, but it still works though. which is more than I can say for it's newer successors.

[Darkmere]

lol yeah my first comp was a 64K Ram Tandy ... and it still works too. Gave it to my children so they can play around with programming

[theone48]

Mine's a Brother. lol, it is amazing, because of their simplicity, there was little to go wrong in those machines, hence the longevity. If we could only duplicate that for our modern workhorses!

PS- sent you a friend invite Darkmere.

[anonymousplayer33]

Gave it to my children so they can play around with programming

you are lucky...most kids wont even take a look at these old machines

[jensenajob22]

Thanks you essellar - very good explanation, i use usb as hd on a tv-set-top-box, and i surpose this mean that i will wear the drives out pretty fast - :/
I have had read errors and have to formate pretty often
I was told that formatting to FAT32 put less 'wear' on the drive than using NTFS?
Has to do with the way the tables are maintained.. ?
Br.

[Darkmere]

FAT32 and NTFS are just FATs ... from what I read NTFS is a lot more stable than FAT32. People also complain that FAT32 slows down Drive reads as you fill the drive up as well ... not sure if it holds water but I use NTFS