Life Cycle of a USB Flash Drive

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by TimoftheC, May 29, 2008.

  1. TimoftheC

    TimoftheC Kilobyte Poster

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    Now, I'm sure some of the clever clogs on this forum are already aware of this, however, I just read an article about USB Flash Drives and the fact that they have a limited life expectancy of either 10,0000 or 100,000 reads, depending on the type of memory used: -

    http://www.getusb.info/what-is-the-life-cycle-of-a-usb-flash-drive/

    Thought this was pretty interesting as was new to me so I thought I'd share it.
     
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  2. NightWalker

    NightWalker Gigabyte Poster

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    I didn’t realise there would be a limited number of times you could read/write to a flash drive. It makes sense though, not many things last forever. The number of times you can connect/disconnect a USB plug and socket is a lot lower than I would have expected.
     
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  3. The_Geek

    The_Geek Megabyte Poster

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    I've had my PNY 2 gig for over 2 years and it gets connected/disconnected at least 20 times a day.
     
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  4. TimoftheC

    TimoftheC Kilobyte Poster

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    Yeah Geek, I have a 256mb disgo that costs me about £40 4 years ago and that's still going strong. Mind you, just brought a 4gb one for £15 - funny how prices can drop when something gets popular :biggrin
     
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  5. Crito

    Crito Banned

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    I was worried about that when I started using ReadyBoost on my Vista machines. But according to Microsoft the life expectancy of a flash drive is over 10 years!

    http://blogs.msdn.com/tomarcher/archive/2006/06/02/615199.aspx
     
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  6. ManicD

    ManicD Byte Poster

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    10,000 uses over 10 years is about complete writes a day, so on a 4GB drive that means writing 4GB 3 times a day....so yeah, over 10 years is gonna be pretty accurate
     
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  7. BosonMichael
    Honorary Member Highly Decorated Member Award 500 Likes Award

    BosonMichael Yottabyte Poster

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    I've never seen one fail. Then again, I haven't seen one that's 10 years old, either. ;)
     
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