Are Flash Drives Failing?

An article in the New Zealand Reseller News indicates that as flash drives increase in size, they may be failing at rates higher than expected.

A typical flash drive should last as much as 100,000 read-write cycles—far more than anyone is likely to use it.

However, as the drives increase in size, they may become subject to the same fragmentation issues that affect large hard drives, causing the drive to perform extra cycles to read or write files that are spread out over several sectors. The extra cycles could considerably shorten the life of a drive.

Another issue that is arising is that of quality control. Lexar recently recalled JumpDrive Firefly and JumpDrive 1GB Secure II flash memory drives, saying it had identified a “potential issue” in the JumpDrive products sold between April 1 and May 31, 2006, in the U.S. As manufacturers ramp up production, quality control is sure to be an issue.

Of course, anyone in their right mind backs up their flash drives to a desktop or laptop computer on a regular basis, just as they back up their computers to some other media. It may be even more important with flash drives, since they are so easily lost.

Remember. The solution to most computer problems is to have an adequate and recent backup.

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