How to store a USB Flash drives?

[sweater]

I was then wondering what's the proper ways of storing usb flash drives so that it may last longer and functioning, and the files in it was still intact.

You know, our country has two season. Asia. Hot and rainy seasons. When it's summer its very hot and our house is not air conditioned...only electric fans makes our life cooler...and when its rainy season...then sometimes it could lasts for a day..sometimes the rain is just mild.

Could it just be ok if I just put the flash drive inside the empty plastic bottle with a tight cover along with moisture absorber (use in medicines bottle) to abosorb any moisture in it....and to protect it also from hot temperature?

How long is the maximum time that the usb flashdrive are plug-in to the computer?

Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

[Cudni]

fairly robust things, flash drives. the idea of safekeeping in a bottle is good

[Sully]

I once went looking for such answers. Heat is the major killer of any transistor, and I don't know exactly if flash uses transistors like most computer components do, but I would think ambient air would not be enough heat to weaken the gates on the transistors if they exist. Keeping it plugged in for years might though.

AFAIK the limitations to flash memory are only that there is a finite number of times the memory can be set. If I remember correctly it was like 100,000 or 1,000,000 on average. So if this is true, short of an electrical charge that might somehow riase the data bits and wipe it, it seems indefinately.

Sul.

[Cutting_Edgetech]

I accidentally washed, and dried one of my flash drives about 2 years ago. It still works!

[ronjor]

Maybe they should add "washable" to their advertising.

[YeOldeStonecat]

Key to long life...make sure you properly shut down connected USB devices (Safely remove hardware/eject GUI in systray) BEFORE physically yanking the drive. Should power them down before yanking.

Keep them away from obvious things like magnets, or right next to your cell phone, keep them out of running microwave ovens, the obvious things..and you're fine.

As for daily use things like regular storage in your pockets, tossing down on the table, getting wet, tossing in your laptop bag, they're durable. I've gotten mine wet plenty of times.

[Sully]

Originally Posted by YeOldeStonecat

Keep them away from obvious things like magnets

I did not think they were susceptible to magnetic fields in the sense of raising all the bits and losing data.

Sul.

[quintile]

That would be interesting, instead of the old "note in a bottle",
you could put a usb in there then throw it into the ocean..

[linuxforall]

Humidity and heat is their biggest enemy, same goes for hdd, any magnetic media for that matter, keep them cool and dry and they last long.

[HAN]

I would say pocket/purse fuzz or dirt (on or around the connector) and static electricity are the ones I would be most concerned about. Along with making sure that they are not in use when removed from the computer (the safe removal thing in Windows.)

[YeOldeStonecat]

Originally Posted by Sully

I did not think they were susceptible to magnetic fields in the sense of raising all the bits and losing data.

Sul.

I don't believe so..from a magnet, like say a hard drive or tape drive or floppy drive or some other magnetic media would be. But I'm not a fan of sensitive electronics being subject to strong magnets anyways. And certainly not near cell phones...some cell phones can zap anything next to them.

[Raza0007]

You can store your flash drives anywhere you like, in a desk drawer, on the table, anywhere in your room. My SanDisk Cruzer titanium has been hanging on my car/house keychain for the last 4 years and it still works! I treat my keychain the same way everyone else does, with utter disdain. Nothing has happened to the flash drive even though it does not even have a cap, has a slider to slide the head in and out, but the head is essentially exposed to the elements. Once I dropped my keychain in a puddle of water, with the flash drive attached. The water must have gone in the drive, I let it dry for two whole days and it worked fine afterwards.

Now for the data. The data on your drive will remain there as long as you do not erase it, drive does not get physically damaged, drive does not get electrically damaged due to a freak power surge from the usb port, or you have reached the end of the drive's rated life.

Flash drives are typically rated for about 100,000 read/write cycles. Keep in mind these are read/write cycles not hours, so if you run 1000 read/write cycles per day, your drive will last only 100 days.

If you use your drive extensively and for long periods at a time then format it in FAT32. NTFS is a taxing file system and causes more read/writes to the drive than the FAT32 system for a given period/job.

That is all you need to worry about. Flash drives are sturdy things.

[TOMxEU]

I use Pretec Bulletproof USB, it was build to be tough and was constructed to be resistant to water, fire and any “heavy” impact and it looks nice, I value my backups.