[production_coordinator]

I'm working on a project where a USB media storage is going to be used to lug programs back and forth from home/work.

Question: How safe are these drives?

Has anyone had any experience with them failing? I intend on backing up everything on my home computer every evening, but use it as a HD during the day (not saving anything locally). I want to know what to expect. It's a 512 Sony (cheap).

[ghporter]

I have not had any problems with the several USB "thumb drives" I've used. They are solid, reliable devices. I would stay with known brands-I don't know about Sony's track record with this kind of product, but they have an overall good rep with hardware in general. I have used a number of PNY "Attaché" drives; my current one is a 1GB device. They've been great.

[f1000]

I try not to delete files until I've filled the entire drive up. I figure that this will minimize the number of write cycles on any portion of the chip.

I've never experienced a failure with a flash drive. I first started using one in 2001 and a lot of people thought it was one of the coolest things they had seen. iPods and cell phones, though, are starting to make flash drives redundant IMHO.

[mduell]

As long as you stop (to clear any write cache and such) them before removing them, they're reliable.

[hickey]

Originally Posted by f1000

iPods and cell phones, though, are starting to make flash drives redundant IMHO.

My audio teacher last quarter said a friend of his was a manager at an apple store, and said ipods are terrible for moving data around, however ive used mine a couple times when I need to move something that my stupid small 16mb thumb drive cant hold. I try not to do that a lot though, and delete the file as soon as I can.