USB Flash Drive Stability?

[Crimsonnaire]

Hi.

I'm looking to get a USB flash drive and found some that have metal bodies. Can someone tell me if digital files are susceptible to corruption if an electric current contacts the metal body? I remember floppy disks being susceptible to losing data if placed near a magnetic source, and also the fact that all memory cards for portable devices have plastic casings. Am I correct in assuming that plastic flash drives are safest for storage stability?

By the way, would anyone happen to know how I can go about testing the actual capacity of a flash drive (not just looking at properties window) without having to transfer actual files onto it?

Thanks.

 

[aviation_man]

Hi.

I'm looking to get a USB flash drive and found some that have metal bodies. Can someone tell me if digital files are susceptible to corruption if an electric current contacts the metal body? I remember floppy disks being susceptible to losing data if placed near a magnetic source, and also the fact that all memory cards for portable devices have plastic casings. Am I correct in assuming that plastic flash drives are safest for storage stability?

By the way, would anyone happen to know how I can go about testing the actual capacity of a flash drive (not just looking at properties window) without having to transfer actual files onto it?

Thanks.

It should be fine. I have a metal body on my flash drive and it's been through the dryer (a lot of static in there) and it was perfect.

I don't really understand the question. Why not just look at the properties under windows?

 

[lawson_jl]

USB drives are not even remotely good as stable storage devices. It's not a good place to keep data that you don't want to lose. They often fail and have errors. Thumb drives are not a magnetic medium like a floppy disc or HDD so there is no danger from magnetic fields. The reason they have plastic cases is plastic is cheaper then metal.

 

[Crimsonnaire]

Thank you guys for the clarification on the susceptibility of USB drives to magnetic/electric currents.

Aviation Man, the reason I want to find an alternative method to testing the capacity of a flash drive is because I had once purchased an 8GB secure digital memory card from China, and the memory stability would fail at around 5GB, never reaching the full 8GB despite the fact that it states 8GB under Properties. These were pretty cheap compared to the real ones, and I thought I was getting a great deal because I never imagined they would be sold with the advertised attributes unless they had tested them. Evidently, they either did test them and decided to use deception or they never actually tested them.

Lawson, what kind of electric contact could damage (either cause data loss/corruption or fry physical components) a hard disk drive? Also, am I correct in assuming that solid state drives (flash hard drives) are not subject to electrical damage like floppy and HDD's because of their flash-based nature similar to the USB drives?

 

[lawson_jl]

Crimsonnaire it sounds like you got a sh*t drive. Considered it lesson learned and just go to your local Wal-Mart or Best Buy and get a PNY USB thumbe drive. There about $25 for an 8GB stick.

Any type of drive can be fried while plugged into a computer. A power surge can take out any electrical componet in a PC. Thing is a brown out and the resulting "shock" when the power goes back to normal is just as dangerous, if not more since a surge protector can't protect against it. That's why I use a UPS on my system. Solid state drives are not subject to damge from a magnetic source such as magnets, TV, speakers etc since they don't use a magnet medium to write data. I think like alot of things the danger of theses things is overated and often missunderstood. Personally I never had a floppy disk get erased because it was sitting on top of my CRT monitor or near unshielded speakers. That doesn't mean it hasen't happen. I persoanlly have had power surgers go right threw cheap surge protectors and damage/kill computers.