One of my external hard-drives recently crashed. Everything on it was backed up, but not “to date” — the backup is about a month old. I’ll soon post more on that crash as well as some new backup strategies I’ve been playing with.

Anyway, in devising one part (or hierarchical tier) of my new risk-mitigating backup routine, I have been thinking about using an external USB “flash drive” (or an array of drives, as shown below) as an augmenter to the standard magnetic/mechanical drive (i.e. the ubiquitous “hard drive”). Specifically, this scheme may be employed on frequently-used files, such as those found in the “My Documents” directory. Because there are no mechanical components in flash “drives”, here’s an important question: are flash drives — in their current state of technological evolution — more reliable than modern magnetic/mechanical hard drives (which have also been improving/evolving)?

I’m especially interested in reliability and longevity issues of “large”-capacity external flash drives with respect to active use — i.e. constantly writing/re-writing to them, similar to the situation encountered for PC internal HDs. While I’m still not clear on the bottom line of this issue, I thought I’d post a few topical links:

• A realistic assessment (as usual) from Wikipedia on USB Flash Drives: “Like all flash memory devices, flash drives can sustain only a limited number of write/erase cycles before failure. In normal use, mid-range flash drives currently on the market will support several million cycles, although write operations will gradually slow as the device ages. This should be a consideration when using a flash drive as a hard drive to run application software or an operating system. To address this (and the space limitations common on flash drives), some developers have produced versions of operating systems (such as Linux) or commonplace applications (such as Mozilla Firefox) designed to run from flash drives. These are typically optimized for size and set up so as to place temporary or intermediate files in memory rather than nonvolatile storage (to avoid excessive writing to the flash memory in the flash drive).”
• Here’s a positive report from the Library of Congress on their use of flash drives for Digital Talking Books for Blind and Physically Handicapped people.
• An interesting thread from Slashdot.org.
• And finally (well, “finally” as far as today’s Blog posting is concerned!) this Blog entry from O’Reilly.

Look for my soon-to-be-posted message on hard-drive reliability and back-up routines. Here’s sneak peak to that upcoming message…

The images above show part of my current “array”-based backup strategy. Here, a few USB flash drives — of different sizes and brands — are connected to a powered 7-port USB 2.0 sharing hub. This extremely useful device can toggle up to seven USB devices back and forth between two computers. I no longer rely on my Ethernet network, because this approach is, in my opinion, faster and safer.

This 2-PC Ultra USB sharing hub will increase your office productivity exponentially. You can share connections among as many as 7 USB devices and then link those peripherals to 2 PCs. Think of all you can accomplish! You can create a full service office that’s perfect for small businesses - it’s all made possible by one dynamic device! Or you can use this Ultra 7-Port Buddy Hub for an integral part of your overall big business matrix. Tested to the strictest quality controls. Made by the finest engineers. This Ultra USB hub includes 2 USB cables, power adapter and User’s Manual

• Share up to 7 devices between 2 computers.
• 7 switch buttons with dual LEDs.
• Individually control each device
• USB 1.1 compliant.
• 12 Mbps Transfer Speed

PNY 512MB Portable Flash Drive

Sandisk 2GB Flash Drive 

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 21st, 2006 at 11:33 pm and is filed under Computers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.