Jump drive stopped working: presumed dead.

Ryushikaze · Post by **Ryushikaze** » 2007-09-11 01:00am

As the title says, I have a flash drive, and it stopped working on me some time over the weekend, when exactly I cannot say, save that it worked on friday, and I didn't touch the thing again til monday. It did not light up, no recognition from any computer I plugged it into, nada. So, I presume it is a loss. My question, then, is what is the likelihood that there is still data on the drive (IE: the connectors, not the flash memory itself has given out), and what, if any, way is there to retrieve this data?

I suspect the answer will be a resounding "SOL", but hey, I figured someone here might have a clue.

As a note, I am willing to open the drive up if required, so don't be squeamish about suggestions if you think they'll work.

Starglider · Post by **Starglider** » 2007-09-11 01:03am

Blow the connector out, plug it into a few different computers, jiggle it around a bit. I lost one a few months back that was sporadically connecting for a while first. But if that doesn't work then no, you are indeed out of luck.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2007-09-11 02:50pm

How long have you had the thing? Flash drives have a pretty limited life measured in read write cycles, after which they are junk. Generally you’d be lucky to have one last two years, and with heavy use they can crap out in six months. Starglider’s advice is about all you can do.

Starglider · Post by **Starglider** » 2007-09-11 03:06pm

Sea Skimmer wrote:Generally you’d be lucky to have one last two years, and with heavy use they can crap out in six months.

This causes a progressive drop in capacity as blocks are marked bad, and only occurs on write (i.e. you erase a cell and it won't hold a charge afterwards). AFAIK it can't kill the whole drive in one go, and even if it did the drive would still show as connected, it would just show as unformatted or full of data errors.

Note that you /can/ kill USB drives with static across the pins, as well as thermal extremes (e.g. leaving them on the dashboard of the car parked in a desert) and the old favourite, putting them through a washing machine. Particularly cheap and nasty ones.

Ryushikaze · Post by **Ryushikaze** » 2007-09-11 07:23pm

Sea Skimmer wrote:How long have you had the thing? Flash drives have a pretty limited life measured in read write cycles, after which they are junk. Generally you’d be lucky to have one last two years, and with heavy use they can crap out in six months. Starglider’s advice is about all you can do.

It was nearing about a year and a half, and I was thinking it was about time to get myself a new one. I just wanted to recover some data I had saved to it before snagging the new one and retiring the old.

And no, it had not been stored in a particularly hot or cold environ, it was attached to a USB extension cord, and had never given me a problem before since its purchase. Static across the pins seems most likely, though it had been plugged into a USB extension from the time it was alive to the time it wasn't, making that too seem unlikely.

But yes, it looks to be well and truly dead. Fortunately, nothing on it was irreplacable, but it is work I have to redo. ::mumble grumble::

Phantasee · Post by **Phantasee** » 2007-09-11 09:05pm

So I guess the lesson for the rest of us is this: Flash drives are transport, not storage?

I wonder what the value is in those huge 8GB models, then? I mean, I suppose it gives you more room to store large files and stuff, but for a day to day use, it's not going to get filled often. Or would the additional capacity mean it will take longer to burn out, what with there being more to burn out?

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2007-09-11 09:14pm

They're for moving more data, obviously. If you don't use a flash drive as a proper drive (ie, running software off it or whatever) but just use it to move files I'd be very surprised if it died before it was so pathetically small you'd replaced it already.

I use flash drives almost exclusively for moving data and isos, so smaller (>4Gb) ones are useless to me.

Alan Bolte · Post by **Alan Bolte** » 2007-09-11 09:47pm

Hope it didn't burn out between systems, or that's a long trip back to the nearest habitable planet.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2007-09-12 01:34am

Yeah. Don’t think of a flash drive as a way of backing stuff up, if you have anything important you should regularly save it to a hard drive. The size doesn’t have any great impact on the life as far as I’m aware, only a small part of the memory has to go bad before it stops working.

As for the value of the size, 8 gigs turns into quite a few divix movies, always nice to have around. One of the main reason why flash drives have gotten so big though, is just because it’s not really economical for companies to make small capacity ones and then charge only a few dollars for them.