Hi, Leo. My 4 GB Soniq USB flash drive having performed well for a year or
two with not a lot of writes, went unformatted. I’m not sure why. I thought I
was treating it well. I have reformatted it, but should I trust it again? Or
should I throw it away? ChkDsk says it’s fine and I scanned for bad sectors but
I’m just not sure. Thanks!
In this excerpt from
Answercast #74, I look at the possible dangers in using a flash drive that
is showing signs of failure… especially if it is not backed up.
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Failing flash drives
You know, I’m really not sure either. The problem is that it depends on a
lot of different factors that are kind of hard to judge from a distance.
If this is an inexpensive thumb drive, in other words, if it’s not costing a
lot to replace it, I wouldn’t hesitate to chuck it. I would throw it away and get
a new one.
Is it backed up?
On the other hand, the other approach that I would use if I wanted to
continue to use this thumb drive, is I would make absolutely, positively,
certain that it was always backed up. That whatever was on it could be lost,
without warning, and that would be an inconvenience only – not a disaster.
I certainly wouldn’t make it part of any critical processes, and I
wouldn’t keep any data on it that was only on it.
That would be one way to protect you from experiencing potentially fatal
data loss – if this thing is really getting closer to its end of life.
Thumb drive cost and quality
That is certainly what I would do on a more expensive device. I would expect
a more expensive device to last longer.
The other thing, of course, is my comments about backing it up… you know
what? Even it’s working, even if you’ve never had a problem with it, you should
always be backing up the contents of your USB drives! This is simply because
“if it’s in only one place, it’s not backed up.”
It doesn’t necessarily take a hardware failure to lose all that data. You
could lose the thumb drive – it happens all the time.
So, by all means, keep backing up your data (or hopefully start
backing up your data) and give it a try. But, like I said, you may want to just
avoid the issue entirely if it’s inexpensive and easy to replace.
(Transcript lightly edited for readability.)
Next from Answercast 74- Can
compressing files reduce the chances of its being infected?
How do you reformat a USB Flash Drive? (novice). Does “reformat” mean the same as “erase, delete” previous data off the drive & reuse it. How do I do this? thanks
01-Dec-2012
Two years is a decent life span for an inexpensive flash drive. Chuck it.
Also, DO NOT EVER run full formats or CHKDSK on these drives. It reduces life. Remember, these are not “mechanical spinners”. It’s flash memory.
01-Dec-2012
A full format may be called for to remove sectors that are wearing out and causing disk read/write errors. Just because a few sectors are going bad doesn’t mean the drive is failing. I have one flash drive that’s 6 or 7 years old – it gets a full format several times a year to “freshen it up”, and it still works well. CHKDSK is a read-only operation if you don’t check the boxes to fix errors – that won’t add any wear to the drive. Two years is still “new”, unless it gets very heavy use.