USB drives, RAM disks and memory cards

Don't Rely on USB drives (pen drives, memory sticks, USB sticks or whatever you want to call them), RAM disks (DVD RAM), OR memory cards (SD, MMC, xD etc.) for data.

Yes I mean it, do not rely on them for 'permanent storage' i.e backing up, or worse still the only copy of your data.  Use them for temporary storage only, and what I mean by that is, if you are using any of the above for data storage make sure you have other copies stored on DVDs (not DVD RAM), or an external hard drive.

Let me tell you of my experiences with these storage products.

DVD RAM:

I used to use this for my website amongst, so I could update on any of my systems, this turned out to be a mistake that cost me.  The disk was new and after a few dozen read/write cycles, I noticed something really weird, certain folders were losing the data and one of the folders was the site content!  The disk appeared to have lost the contents of the level two / three folders but not the folders themselves.  The level one folders (those in the root of the disk) were OK, very strange.  So, now I will not entrust permanent storage tasks to DVD-RAM (unless I have several other copies elsewhere- and yes I know I should be backing up regularly and that I had, so I got the latest backup and used what I wanted from that - it was a hard drive backup by the way).

USB pen drive

This was a near total disaster for my other half, she has been using a pen drive to store a growing amount of knowledge on a favourite subject of hers.  It was being accumulated on a daily basis, at her place of work and at home, hence the use of something small (not too small to go unnoticed) and portable, that could be used on virtually any current system (by the way when Microsoft Office was not available, then OpenOffice.org was - set to read and write MS Office documents and spreadsheets).  One evening, after work (she had used the pen drive at the office), she plugged the pen drive into her laptop, with no response at all from the drive.  The follow days were fill with methodical attempts to recover the data, to no avail (a situation I found was a common situation, on internet forums).  So whilst it was an unfortunate situation, the sources of all the work were still available and she went to work rebuilding her notes - on a hard drive in one place only).

SD card

Now I am making assumptions here, that memory card storage in general has the same characteristics, whilst the method of accessing will vary hence the various types of card, e.g. xD, SD, MMC,  Duo, etc.  Also the type of storage gate may differ (currently I am not sure whether SD memory uses a NAND gate for storage or not)

This situation was very similar to the one with the DVD-RAM, in that data was stored and frequently used on an SD card.  On accessing the card recently the card showed very similar characteristics to the DVD-RAM situation above, in that some of the deeper folders (level 2 and 3) had lost their data, but not the folders i.e. the folders were empty!.  Fortunately the data in level one folders was available and ok.   Again a backup provided what I needed.  Phew! I am thankful for backups.

A further point to note here was the weather at the time of the failures was hot and humid. Now this may be a coincidence, but it makes me wonder.

Any way, that's it for this post

See you people
Prometheus1618


We now have a FREE SPYWARE REPORT available, yours to keep and share if you wish. Fill in your details below and get yours now

eMail address:
First Name:

'For Exceptional Service on Computer Repair visit Green Dragon Solutions'