[GLLUG] USB Backup Media

STeve Andre' andres at msu.edu
Wed Feb 17 22:40:02 EST 2010


On Wednesday 17 February 2010 22:31:08 Chick Tower wrote:
> I had considered buying an external hard drive that attaches via a USB
> port for backing up my PCs.  Then it occurred to me that I could do the
> same thing with flash drives, and they would be even more portable and
> would save me money.  I could probably get by with 4GB drives, but 8GB
> ones aren't much more expensive.  I know that the flash drives have a
> limited number of write operations before they fail.  Does anyone know
> if they fail completely, or if there are any warning signs before they

Flash drives today are not limited by the number of writes, effectlvely.
There is a limit I suppose, just like a hard disk, but the concept that you
only had 250K writes before death does not happen today.

> fail?
>
> I figure, to minimize writes, I would tar the files to be backed up on
> some extra space, or another partition, on the PC's hard drive and then
> copy that file to the flash drive.  If a flash drive fails, I can just
> pop in another one in its place.  Does anyone see any drawbacks to using
> flash drives as backup media?

Yes, there is a huge drawback.  They are solid state, and therefore sensitive
to static discharge.  Just a few weeks ago a friend lost a 4G stick when his
son came running to him over the carpet, and smacked into him with a
big <ZAP> that they laughed over, and then he found that the sick that
was in the front usb slot on his Dell was dead.  I examined it and could
not even look at the geometry on it.  The usb interface logic was damaged.
I once got into a firefight with a stick to get some dreadfully important
data from it, and it was disgusting.

They're great for on-the-go backups, like when traveling, but they should
not be trusted as a main backup source. 

--STeve Andre'




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