cabinetman

Hi all.

I thought I would share my disturbing experiences about those neat little "pen drives" that we have all found so useful.

To read the literature about them would lead you to believe that they are indestructible. One of my pens actually said that the data would last 50+ years on it. I figured that since there are no moving parts, chances for a failure would be slim to none. That is evidentially not the case, however.

My daughter and I have both encountered pen drive failures in the last week. They were two different brands and sizes. Both were "brand name" pens, too. And, yes, we did follow the protocol and removed them properly when prompted and stored them properly.

What began to happen was a failure to read the pen. I'd remove it and then reinsert it. Voila! It popped up just a normal. Therefore, I figured that it was just a minor glitch. That, friends, appears to be the first sign of an impending failure. Once that starts to happen, the pens appear to permanently fail within a very short time. The system will report a drive inserted but will say that it can not be read. Since it can not be read, none of the data can be accessed. After repeated removals and insertions you might prompt another read but what we discovered is that after numerous attempts, the drive just won’t work anymore. No data-recovery software will help, either, as the drive can’t be opened. period.

I've posted elsewhere and have found that others have had a similar experience and two years seems to be when this phenomenon starts to occur.

I'm only sharing this with you because some important data was lost. It should have been saved on a hard disk first then exported to the pen drive. My daughter has learned an important lesson here and I'd just like to help someone out there avoid the same situation.

Pen drives are a wonderful little tool but should never be used as a primary or even a backup drive in any way, shape, or form. Rather, they should be used to simply transfer data quickly between two systems but all data should be stored on your fixed hdd and then backed up on another medium or hard drive.

The bottom line is that the USB pen drives will fail much sooner than I would have thought.

I'd love to hear from anyone else who may have had a failure in the recent past.

Rome

keymaker

i have a little usb removable storage device but ive seen those pen drives too. i never had any experience with them but it sucks that your broke. not one but mutple pen drives.

oldmn

You said it all right there
And not on just one HDD eather, Mine is a little excessive I have a duplicate copy on 4 drives. , Parinoid? But Im not :5-scared: when a drive fails or, I Do somthing I shouldn't have.

Andy128

I too had a memorex thumb drive that failed exactly as you described. It got to the point that I could not get any data or response from it. I threw it in a drawer and forgot about it for several months. I then took it out one day and
-strangely it worked. Then two or three turns later, it would not work.
I was very fortunate though- I had backed up all data.

Yet another reason to be paranoid about back-ups!

Andy

karusho

my pen drive is very strange: it works well on my XP, but when i put it to a mac of any sort (os 9, os x, minimac, g5, iBook), nothing happens on the screen even though the light on the drive is flashing properly. ive decided to backup everything on it on my pc and get a new one. thank god the prices are low enough to throw away 20 bucks every 2-3 years.

EDIT: i hadnt used my drive in a whole year. there were important files on it that i had permanently lost forever the last time i had to wipe my HD. i was kinda happy that i still had the files on it... unfortunately two of the files were corrupted.

cabinetman

So, others have had failures, too. I hope that the word gets around that these little beasts are great when they work but you should expect a failure, eventually. Darn. I had hoped they'd workd for 50 years as advertised.

I'm optimistic that maybe leaving the one that my daughter had in a drawer for a bit will allow it to be accessed once more so the data can be drawn off. Cross you fingers.


rome

please

I love my little flash drive too. They are great and fast and easy. I rarely keep anything that is only on the flash, but I will make sure now. My feeling is the point-of-failure for these guys is the pen drives' internal usb-memory interface. Most of you notice that sometimes the drive does work and the data is still intact. I think the flash memory part is good for 1000's of flashes. The USB connector itself is pretty durable. So it must be the connector between USB and flash memory that is the weak point. Does anyone think it could be from twisting or wiggling to install/remove them that contributes to its quick failure? I will be more gentle with mine when I install and remove mine in the future.

wonderer

Your experiences with these drives don't exactly encourage hope but here is a plea for help from my wife.

"On my first day at a new job, I plugged my USB flash drive into a networked PC and it displayed as Drive D:\ but after my first day it would not work any more either at work or at home. The device manager says it is OK and I tried downloading a new driver but to no avail. I have also tried to re-assign the drive via control panel -> administrative tools -> computer management -> disk management, but the drive does not display, so I cannot change it back to E:\ How can I get hold of my data and get this flash drive to work again? I have tried other flash drives both in my home PC and at work and they display and open properly, so the problem does not lie with the USB port."

Have any of you got any ideas?

In case it is relevant, I should add that my wife has a laptop at home and a desktop at work and the OS is Windows XP in both places. Originally, the flash drive displayed as Drive E both at home and where she used to work.

Mickeysquid

Yep, had one and it failed within 4 months of purchase. Luckily STAPLES reimbursed me for it. It seems it had been discontinued. Never trusted it for permanent storage so I lost only minimal data.

Dogtired

I cant believe there isint a solution.!!!! it just happened to me.