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General discussion

Flash Drive Question...

Dec 7, 2006 2:47AM PST

just got a new Thumb Drive... my 6th one..

i'm using it a lot....


is there a Number of times it can be Plugged in and UnPlugged...???

is there a Number of times One can Write and Erase to the Drive???


Thank You for Your Help

David

Discussion is locked

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1. Until the contacts wear out or...
Dec 7, 2006 3:05AM PST

You break something. The contact system even with the wrong material is somewhere about 500 cycles but with the proper material is well into the 10,000 and up range.

2. Not a firm number but you get 10,000 to 1,000,000 erase cycles. Now this is actually a number higher since that refers to single bank or cell erasures and only when you "flip the bit".

More reading at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory

Bob

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Hardly...
Dec 8, 2006 12:01AM PST

For all intents and purposes, you're NOT going to wear out the flash drive. Excluding any h/w faults such as peeled or dirty contacts or ESD damage, the flash drive isn't going to wear out. You may encounter a s/w glitch or such, but these are usually known and can be corrected or googled for a fix. As for ESD(static) damage be sure to ground yourself before handling your drive, after all the drive runs on 5Vs, static can generate well beyond that and having it in your hand then touching the USB port can(and has) be discharged through it causing weird or unexplained headaches of why things don't work in the future. Google using keywords: 'flash drive life cycle' or similar

tada -----Willy Happy