[The Godfather]

Wow. I just found my USB flash drive in the drying machine, after it was done drying my clothes. The little thumb drive has been lost all this week, been in the laundry pile in my pants' pocket, then in under 50 cm of soapy swirly water for 25 minutes (Colors cycle), then at drying machine temperatures (Whites and colors) with a Snuggle tissue.

I sticked it in my iBook, and it worked. It reads and writes. The data survived too. I am so surprised!

Any personal stories about electronics that survive brutal trips like this?

[Kilbey]

Excellent!!! You are a lucky man to have found it, and after what it went through, for it to work.

I once spilled a lot of water on a Newton I was changing the batteries in. I let it dry out for a week and tried it and it worked perfectly. Still works today, but I rarely use it if ever. Mostly just to look up an old address or two.

[CharlesS]

What brand is it? My SanDisk didn't survive three months of completely normal use before getting the point where it would randomly corrupt all the data on it every so often.

[shabbasuraj]

One of my CF cards survived a similar situation.

Yay team.

[ambush]

my cousin dropped his iPod in a lake.

And It still works.

[phantomdragonz]

believe it or not most flash cards have good warrantees... I have a san disk card that just up and died on me... so I e-mail sandisk tell them what happened (told them about trying different readers, and other cards in my camera... and their reply was a fedex shipping label... a week or so later i get a new card!

Zach

[CD Hanks]

Rather than risk losing your data, I'd get everything off of it, reformat it, and then put everything back.

[The Godfather]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
What brand is it? My SanDisk didn't survive three months of completely normal use before getting the point where it would randomly corrupt all the data on it every so often.

It is a cheap no-brand 128 MB that I bought from compgeeks.com. I don't remember the brand.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by phantomdragonz:
believe it or not most flash cards have good warrantees... I have a san disk card that just up and died on me... so I e-mail sandisk tell them what happened (told them about trying different readers, and other cards in my camera... and their reply was a fedex shipping label... a week or so later i get a new card!

Zach

That's what I intend to do, but I'd still like to know what brand of flash drive can survive even the spin cycle in a washing machine. That sounds like a pretty solid flash drive...

[Eug Wanker]

Some guy was trying to photograph an explosion with multiple remote cameras. Unfortunately the cameras were too close, and the debris blew the cameras (expensive ones too) to pieces. He found one of the CF cards (a Sandisk) and tried it. It worked just fine.

He told the story to Sandisk and they used his story in some press blurbs.

[MilkmanDan]

Flash drives have become so cheap lately. I've been thinking it might not be such a bad idea to pick one up once I head back to the states. A 512 or a gig flash drive for under $100!!

[The Godfather]

I found it
http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp...=USB20-128FD-N

So cheap looking, no one will try to steal it.

[Kenneth]

Lucky guys.. I spilled coffee on my original Apple USB keyboard (iMac).. it didn't survive.

[the_glassman]

Let's see an iPod do that! Ha.

[GSixZero]

I had my original 5G iPod in my pocket, and my brother pushed me into the pool. I pulled the ipod out, but a bunch of water came out of it. It would power on for near a week. One day I plugged it in, and the backlight came on. The next day the apple logo came on. Two days later it would boot to a flashing folder icon, one day after that it booted to the menus and worked perfectly. The battery was kaput, but I replaced it and it's still working great.

[Peter]

if anyone is interested, crucial make awesome pen drives... uber cheap too.

[DeathToWindows]

yeah, haven't managed to drown mine yet, just bash the **** out of it on a daily basis... 14mo and going strong

but with 1GB units going for $40-50 after rebate... I might just have to upgrade

[nerd]

I have washed mine a couple times also and it still works. Mine is a 128MB CompUSA branded one. I'm not concerned if it dies someday; I use if to transfer files from the work PC to my Powerbook because I'm not allowed to plug into the LAN at work.

Brad

[MilkmanDan]

Originally posted by DeathToWindows:
yeah, haven't managed to drown mine yet, just bash the **** out of it on a daily basis... 14mo and going strong

but with 1GB units going for $40-50 after rebate... I might just have to upgrade

Yeah... so much space.... for emergency porn files.

[i_rooster]

I once swallowed a cf card, it came out the other end and it still works!! still smells though

[brapper]

dropped my canon digital camera in a pond and it sat at the bottom for about a half hour before I found it. Full functionality came back over about 2 weeks.