What are the pros and cons of using a flash drive instead of an external hard drive as a backup for documents? I've been using a flash drive for a long time now, removing it each time I add or change a document with no problems at all. I'm wondering, though, if anything can go wrong.
Flash Drive
- Thread starter Tom Hart
- Start date
I have absolutely no real data to back this up, but anecdotally, the flash drives have shown me a tendency to go bad over time. Sometimes they just get broken. They are small and typically fragile, so they will just be more susceptible to damage. Beyond that, I've personally had two (of different brands) that just went bad somehow. I've also got a few that are perfectly fine after a couple of years.
I treat flash drives as temporary, disposable solutions for migrating files, but definitely not as a permanent archive.
I treat flash drives as temporary, disposable solutions for migrating files, but definitely not as a permanent archive.
Natobasso
Tech-Bot 5000
Flash drives are non-volatile memory making them pretty good storage devices (unlike RAM based memory), but their small size makes them easy to lose. That's the biggest drawback I can see:
http://www.lockergnome.com/nexus/windows/2006/02/03/should-i-use-a-flash-drive-as-my-primary-backup/
The other drawback would be lack of storage space (up to 4GB these days, but not a lot if you are storing images, movies and music).
Of course things can go wrong with any storage medium, the trick is to have an onsite AND an offsite back up for files you can't bear to lose.
http://www.lockergnome.com/nexus/windows/2006/02/03/should-i-use-a-flash-drive-as-my-primary-backup/
The other drawback would be lack of storage space (up to 4GB these days, but not a lot if you are storing images, movies and music).
Of course things can go wrong with any storage medium, the trick is to have an onsite AND an offsite back up for files you can't bear to lose.
Surprising how many people get that wrong!
Both 'real' hard drives and flash drives have a life expectancy. Even servers have a life expectancy.
For important data, it's always better when there are two backups.
For instance, one of the people in my house had the external hard drive with everthing purchased from iTMS break... that was where the movies were stored, AND the backup.
Would be interesting to see statistics of probabilities and life expectancies for both media ...
I usually keep the small files backed up on flash, and bigger on hard drives. Or servers.
For important data, it's always better when there are two backups.
For instance, one of the people in my house had the external hard drive with everthing purchased from iTMS break... that was where the movies were stored, AND the backup.
Would be interesting to see statistics of probabilities and life expectancies for both media ...
I usually keep the small files backed up on flash, and bigger on hard drives. Or servers.
I hope that you don't mean to imply that these are comparable. Servers can stay up for years with no maintenance at all. There have been reports of servers having been "lost" for years and never dropping a packet. Generally, the life expectancy of mechanical drives is determined by the "quality" of the drive. In this case, quality is spelled $q-$u-$a-$l-$i-$t-$y. The life expectancy of flash drives seems to be a limitation of the technology. They cannot fail mechanically like a hard drive, but they can simply stop working--even after just one read/write cycle on rare occasion.
Servers hard drives work way longer, BUT what matters in the planning of them is the averages that the hard drives used will last among the other things. And they can be configured in several ways to achieve that if one or a few hard drives fail they will still function. Still - no maintenance and no one having a look ever on the health status will for for a while, usually for quite a while, but one day the drives will fail, whether it's after 30,000 or 200,000 hours of use. And once the second drive fails in a RAID 5 (when the first failed was just ignored) it's a bit late to start to think that you might want to keep a backup of the important data in it.
(And sometimes they last less than that .. all it takes is someone who wants to conserve energy by switching off the fans in the server room and the ups).
(And sometimes they last less than that .. all it takes is someone who wants to conserve energy by switching off the fans in the server room and the ups).
If you include every flash drive ever made by every manufacturer in the World, no one can give you a definitive "yes." I have personally never seen a flash drive that didn't work on a Mac. OTOH, a growing number of name-brand drives don't work particularly well with even fairly new Windows PCs. Thank you U3! If you stick with recently manufactured flash drives from name brand manufacturers, then you have nothing to worry about. U3 is an annoyance, but it won't choke a Mac like it can choke my Dell.