«

On Wed, 29 Dec 2004 03:04:18 +1300, Troglodyte <>
wrote:
>
>Got a pen drive 2.0 some months ago. No probelsm with it. Just a
>general question. How do they last ? Are they any less reliable than a
>normal hard drive ? Plan on using it on a daily basies during the
>coming year, and would like to be able to trust it.
>
Mine went through the wash and still works!

Cheers,

Cliff
--

The National Party manifesto can be viewed here:

http://www.labour.org.nz/policy/index.html

Bruce Knox wrote:
> On Wed, 29 Dec 2004 03:04:18 +1300, Troglodyte <>
> wrote:
>
>> Got a pen drive 2.0 some months ago. No probelsm with it. Just a
>> general question. How do they last ? Are they any less reliable
>> than a normal hard drive ? Plan on using it on a daily basies
>> during the coming year, and would like to be able to trust it.
>>
>>
>> Cheers Trog
> Hi, from what I know the USB bit can be the most unreliable. If you
> get read errors a bit of alcohol and a cotton bud can get you going
> again.

What do you do with the cotton bud?
--
~misfit~

Bruce Knox wrote:
> On Wed, 29 Dec 2004 03:04:18 +1300, Troglodyte <>
> wrote:
>
>> Got a pen drive 2.0 some months ago. No probelsm with it. Just a
>> general question. How do they last ? Are they any less reliable
>> than a normal hard drive ? Plan on using it on a daily basies
>> during the coming year, and would like to be able to trust it.
>>
>>
>> Cheers Trog
> Hi, from what I know the USB bit can be the most unreliable. If you
> get read errors a bit of alcohol and a cotton bud can get you going
> again.

What do you do with the cotton bud?
--
~misfit~

In article <cqsctr$qed$>, Dogboy <> wrote:

>Also make sure you unmount it like the other poster mentioned. If for
>some reason it wont unmount make sure you switch off the machine when
>you take it out. 99% of the time pulling it out directly doesnt make a
>difference if your not moving any data across, but that 1% will get you
>(and has got me).

Isn't that just your normal risk of filesystem corruption when you don't
do a clean unmount? Why not just format it with a journalled filesystem
like reiserfs.

In article <cqsctr$qed$>, Dogboy <> wrote:

>Also make sure you unmount it like the other poster mentioned. If for
>some reason it wont unmount make sure you switch off the machine when
>you take it out. 99% of the time pulling it out directly doesnt make a
>difference if your not moving any data across, but that 1% will get you
>(and has got me).

Isn't that just your normal risk of filesystem corruption when you don't
do a clean unmount? Why not just format it with a journalled filesystem
like reiserfs.

Lawrence D¹Oliveiro wrote:
>>Also make sure you unmount it like the other poster mentioned. If for
>>some reason it wont unmount make sure you switch off the machine when
>>you take it out. 99% of the time pulling it out directly doesnt make a
>>difference if your not moving any data across, but that 1% will get you
>>(and has got me).

> Isn't that just your normal risk of filesystem corruption when you don't
> do a clean unmount? Why not just format it with a journalled filesystem
> like reiserfs.

well, for one, windows doesnt read it by default, so it would limit it's
"portability" between machines.

sure, not an issue if you dont use windows, but ~90% of all users do.

I believe if you format them with ntfs they are also fine... although Im
not sure how windows handles permissions etc on removable volumes, or
even if it "allows" it.

Lawrence D¹Oliveiro wrote:
>>Also make sure you unmount it like the other poster mentioned. If for
>>some reason it wont unmount make sure you switch off the machine when
>>you take it out. 99% of the time pulling it out directly doesnt make a
>>difference if your not moving any data across, but that 1% will get you
>>(and has got me).

> Isn't that just your normal risk of filesystem corruption when you don't
> do a clean unmount? Why not just format it with a journalled filesystem
> like reiserfs.

well, for one, windows doesnt read it by default, so it would limit it's
"portability" between machines.

sure, not an issue if you dont use windows, but ~90% of all users do.

I believe if you format them with ntfs they are also fine... although Im
not sure how windows handles permissions etc on removable volumes, or
even if it "allows" it.

Lawrence D¹Oliveiro wrote:
> In article <cqsctr$qed$>, Dogboy <> wrote:
>
>
>>Also make sure you unmount it like the other poster mentioned. If for
>>some reason it wont unmount make sure you switch off the machine when
>>you take it out. 99% of the time pulling it out directly doesnt make a
>>difference if your not moving any data across, but that 1% will get you
>>(and has got me).
>
>
> Isn't that just your normal risk of filesystem corruption when you don't
> do a clean unmount? Why not just format it with a journalled filesystem
> like reiserfs.


Well, it is and it isnt. Filesystem corruption is certainly possible.
What I was REALLY talking about though was something which happened to
me about 6 months ago. Being the family tecchie I was called in to look
at a relatives machine.

I had my flash drive in and I started playing around in DOS for some
reason so instead of rebooting I just decided to pull it out. When I
did that I literally saw a spark jump from the USB port (or nearby case)
on to my USB flash drive. I thought it was totally fried but after a
lot of messing around I managed to recover 3/4 of the space. 1/4 was
lost. Files were long gone by that time.

Now that I think about it, it sounds like something isnt grounded
properly on that machine or something like that. Could explain why its
been a POS from day one. The point is, you never know.

--
Dogboy

Wargame Terrain Generator
http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~healer8/

Lawrence D¹Oliveiro wrote:
> In article <cqsctr$qed$>, Dogboy <> wrote:
>
>
>>Also make sure you unmount it like the other poster mentioned. If for
>>some reason it wont unmount make sure you switch off the machine when
>>you take it out. 99% of the time pulling it out directly doesnt make a
>>difference if your not moving any data across, but that 1% will get you
>>(and has got me).
>
>
> Isn't that just your normal risk of filesystem corruption when you don't
> do a clean unmount? Why not just format it with a journalled filesystem
> like reiserfs.


Well, it is and it isnt. Filesystem corruption is certainly possible.
What I was REALLY talking about though was something which happened to
me about 6 months ago. Being the family tecchie I was called in to look
at a relatives machine.

I had my flash drive in and I started playing around in DOS for some
reason so instead of rebooting I just decided to pull it out. When I
did that I literally saw a spark jump from the USB port (or nearby case)
on to my USB flash drive. I thought it was totally fried but after a
lot of messing around I managed to recover 3/4 of the space. 1/4 was
lost. Files were long gone by that time.

Now that I think about it, it sounds like something isnt grounded
properly on that machine or something like that. Could explain why its
been a POS from day one. The point is, you never know.

--
Dogboy

Wargame Terrain Generator
http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~healer8/

On Wed, 29 Dec 2004 15:10:55 +1300, "Dave - Dave.net.nz"
<> wrote:

>Lawrence D¹Oliveiro wrote:
>>>Also make sure you unmount it like the other poster mentioned. If for
>>>some reason it wont unmount make sure you switch off the machine when
>>>you take it out. 99% of the time pulling it out directly doesnt make a
>>>difference if your not moving any data across, but that 1% will get you
>>>(and has got me).
>
>> Isn't that just your normal risk of filesystem corruption when you don't
>> do a clean unmount? Why not just format it with a journalled filesystem
>> like reiserfs.
>
>well, for one, windows doesnt read it by default, so it would limit it's
>"portability" between machines.
>
>sure, not an issue if you dont use windows, but ~90% of all users do.
>
>I believe if you format them with ntfs they are also fine... although Im
>not sure how windows handles permissions etc on removable volumes, or
>even if it "allows" it.
>
It's all done by numbers. SIDs actually.

Cheers,

Cliff
--

The National Party manifesto can be viewed here:

http://www.labour.org.nz/policy/index.html