Durability Issue between Flash and Disc external file storage

Hello group, Until now I am wondering if the much vaunted robustness
is just a false claim or indeed a reality as its contrary to my
experience:
I had 5 failed flash drives-4 from Jetflash( Transcend) and 1 from
Kingston and never had one from the standard external platter type
hard drive ever since.
I used the external drives for transferring data from other computers
to my PC.
Now I would like to ask the opinion from experts here about this
particular device
Does my experience corroborates with what others have with these
particular file storage devices?
Now another question, which is easier to recover precious data: from
these compact flash drives or from this bulky disc drives?
Do you have any DIY procedures for doing data recovery from failed
SSDS and HDDs?
TIA
Roy

On Wed, 4 Nov 2009 11:12:17 -0800 (PST), Roy
<roybasan@gmail.com> wrote:

>Hello group, Until now I am wondering if the much vaunted robustness
>is just a false claim or indeed a reality as its contrary to my
>experience:
>I had 5 failed flash drives-4 from Jetflash( Transcend) and 1 from
>Kingston and never had one from the standard external platter type
>hard drive ever since.
>I used the external drives for transferring data from other computers
>to my PC.
>Now I would like to ask the opinion from experts here about this
>particular device
>Does my experience corroborates with what others have with these
>particular file storage devices?

I find USB flash drive to be more durable/robust/etc, so
long as you don't leave them in your pants pocket so they
get wet in the wash and are plugged in while still wet
(though some are now totally waterproof), and so long as the
are not bumped while sticking out of a USB socket which can
break the solder joints between the PCB and the connector.

I've had fairly good luck with external drives but not as
good, keeping in mind that the external needs to have a
decent quality power supply instead of the cheap junk PSU
that comes with some enclosures, and particularly with full
3.5" sized 7200 or higher RPM drives, that the enclosure has
a fan to keep drive temps lower. Even then, in ideal
situations there still seems to be a higher % of hard drives
that fail, and if used long enough practically all of them
will while in a backup scenario it is pretty unlikely you
would exceed the write cycle limitations of flash memory.

I perfer flash memory for data sets that are small enough
that it's affordable, but it has to be kept in mind that
most flash thumbdrives have data retention ratings of
roughly 10 years, though you can't expect a hard drive to
last that long either so optical media becomes the preferred
solution for longest term backups, or magnetic tape storage
assuming you'll be able to find or still have a working
compatible tape drive many years later.

With flash drives on the other hand you have no moving parts
to wear out (except a write lock switch in some models but I
prefer to avoid designs that use them), no rubber rollers or
grease to harden over time.



>Now another question, which is easier to recover precious data: from
>these compact flash drives or from this bulky disc drives?

Depends on what failed. A skilled technician at a data
receovery center could transplant a flash chip onto another
circuit board if any other part failed, to get data off but
that does no good if a power surge fries the memory itself.

A data recovery center also has methods of trying to pull
data off the hard drive depending on what failed and if it
is only the enclosure rather than the drive itself, any
resonably competent end-user can do this themselves.

The key in either scenario is do not keep only one copy of
valuable data. For example if you have a small enough
amount of data that it will fit on a single USB flash drive,
it isn't excessively expensive to buy a 2nd flash drive for
a duplicate backup, and/or put it on DVDs or other mediums,
though I would be very weary of making duplicate backups on
the same brand, even worse the same batch of optical media
in case it's a bad batch and all the discs are prone to
early failure.


>Do you have any DIY procedures for doing data recovery from failed
>SSDS and HDDs?
>TIA
>Roy

.... best to send it off to professionals, other attempts at
data retrieval can cause further damage making recovery by a
professional impossible.

As for recovery with either type if you have the electronics
skills to reverse engineer and the tools to make
measurements you can troubleshoot the circuit boards to some
extent to see if you can locate a faulty component and
potentially repair it or replace the circuit board but that
would tend to be a special/unusual situation, since backups
should make it unnecessary and if the data is important
enough to bother with recovery attempts it is important
enough to pay a pro to do it.


Ultimately if I were you I would try to determine what made
the flash drives fail. Research whether fellow owners of
the same models found them particularly failure prone
(though reports of failure on popular models may not
indicate much, a certain % of them will fail from myriad
reasons), and if not then focus on whether the OS corrupted
it, the physical port it plugs into was bad, it was wet or
physically damaged, or a power surge came over the AC mains,
or the PSU was poor quality or failing.

Having written this much, I reused an old computer for a
fileserver, put some mirrored arrays of hard drives in it,
and haven't lost data in many years with that being the lone
source of much of the data (much of it not valuable data so
I made no other backup of that). Depends on how much
storage space you need, once I built a HTPC many years ago
and started ripping DVDs I found the amount of data
unmanageable any other way.

On Nov 6, 6:14*am, kony <s...@spam.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 4 Nov 2009 11:12:17 -0800 (PST), Roy
>

>
> ... best to send it off to professionals, other attempts at
> data retrieval can cause further damage making recovery by a
> professional impossible.
>
> As for recovery with either type if you have the electronics
> skills to reverse engineer and the tools to make
> measurements you can troubleshoot the circuit boards to some
> extent to see if you can locate a faulty component and
> potentially repair it or replace the circuit board but that
> would tend to be a special/unusual situation, since backups
> should make it unnecessary and if the data is important
> enough to bother with recovery attempts it is important
> enough to pay a pro to do it.
>
> Ultimately if I were you I would try to determine what made
> the flash drives fail. *Research whether fellow owners of
> the same models found them particularly failure prone
> (though reports of failure on popular models may not
> indicate much, a certain % of them will fail from myriad
> reasons), and if not then focus on whether the OS corrupted
> it, the physical port it plugs into was bad, it was wet or
> physically damaged, or a power surge came over the AC mains,
> or the PSU was poor quality or failing.
>

Thanks for that comprehensive feedback Kony!

I was analyzing the causes of those failed flash drives and they have
similar behavior that when plugged into the USB socket in the desktop
that is where the drives starts to fail.
Is there a difference in voltage with the desktop and Laptop USB
slots? Might be thinking about power difference may have been one
cause why these drives tend to fail more if used in desktops than in
laptops as based on my expereince.
One thing that I noticed at the onset of failure wa the flashing
light when the drive is plugged into the usb slot just stop and the
drive is no longer recognized.
If I checked in the my computer for any available drives connected I
can still see the removable drives but when I clicked properties
there is nothing in it or physically blank.
Its likely also that continuous bumping with the USB port may be one
reason that I am not discounting but I was expecting that it should be
robust.
I had 5 2.5inch HDD( housed in a portable enclosure) and neither of
them have failed so far and they are already 3-4 years old. I am using
the same thing for transferring larger volumes of data that is beyond
the capacity of the flash disk I have.
Meanwhile the flash drives were just barely a year old!
That is why I am starting to suspect that the claims of robustness of
this SSD is unwarranted...
They might be shockproof but they have delicate connections that a
series of bumps to the USB port can ultimately destroy it.
Other people I know have the same issue like mine...their flash drives
regardless of brands are more susceptible to failure that their
portable USB disk type drives....

I am not sure either with my limited electronic hardware skills I am
capable of retrieving the precious data from those failed pesky SSD.
Nor I would be willing to release funds for data recovery by
professionals.(Sigh, those people sometimes may exploit your
situation..... and overcharge you for such )
Might have just to reconstruct those saved information again. from
the sources ..<sigh>

Regards
Roy

On Thu, 5 Nov 2009 19:15:25 -0800 (PST), Roy
<roybasan@gmail.com> wrote:


>I was analyzing the causes of those failed flash drives and they have
>similar behavior that when plugged into the USB socket in the desktop
>that is where the drives starts to fail.
>Is there a difference in voltage with the desktop and Laptop USB
>slots?

No, both should be real close, supposed to be exactly 5.0V,
but +- 5% still should't kill a flash drive.


>Might be thinking about power difference may have been one
>cause why these drives tend to fail more if used in desktops than in
>laptops as based on my expereince.

I'd wonder if the desktop USB ports are powered by the 5VSB
power rail from the PSU, in some PSU models that is a
weakness in either capacity, or in remaining powered when
system/fans are shut off so long term the self-generated
heat degrades it... just a thought, I can't be sure that's
the cause.


>One thing that I noticed at the onset of failure wa the flashing
>light when the drive is plugged into the usb slot just stop and the
>drive is no longer recognized.
>If I checked in the my computer for any available drives connected I
>can still see the removable drives but when I clicked properties
>there is nothing in it or physically blank.
>Its likely also that continuous bumping with the USB port may be one
>reason that I am not discounting but I was expecting that it should be
>robust.

Depends on the drive design, some are more robust than
others. Some would break the USB port before they failed
form a bump, others the plastic casing just snaps together
and flexes some so much of the stress is placed on the
solder joints which are often pads on the PCB instead of
through-hole... similar thing happens to the headphone jacks
on many portable audio players, power jacks on notebooks,
etc... they really don't think much about engineering for
worst case stresses on too many products.


>I had 5 2.5inch HDD( housed in a portable enclosure) and neither of
>them have failed so far and they are already 3-4 years old. I am using
>the same thing for transferring larger volumes of data that is beyond
>the capacity of the flash disk I have.
>Meanwhile the flash drives were just barely a year old!
>That is why I am starting to suspect that the claims of robustness of
>this SSD is unwarranted...

Maybe on particular models, but of the several I've owned
over the years none of them has failed, though I concede
that the oldest ones were rotated out of primary/frequent
use due to being lower capacity and slower than their
replacements.

Casing durability is one of the primary things I look for in
a flash drive though, if I can wiggle the connector even a
little bit I demote the drive to infrequent use. That
doesn't necessarily mean a large casing either, if it's a
hollow plastic shell that still may not be enough, I like
the ones with a metal shell like OCZ Rally2 or Supertalent
Pico, though the latter has, due to it's tiny size, an
inherant max capacity limitation, no LED, and a bit slower
write speed than contemporary equivalent price/class
alternatives... but I could throw it onto the ground and
stomp on it then take it straight from a hot pot of coffee
and into a USB port after a quick wipe with a towel and
expect it'd still work.



>They might be shockproof but they have delicate connections that a
>series of bumps to the USB port can ultimately destroy it.
>Other people I know have the same issue like mine...their flash drives
>regardless of brands are more susceptible to failure that their
>portable USB disk type drives....

A couple times when I had flash drives that weren't very
durable I popped open the casing, put a little sliver of
tape over the rear of the USB connector so it was blocked
off from epoxy seepage, and liberally applied epoxy to that
end to strengthen it. These days it seems more trouble than
it's worth but it was less trouble than returning the
product and arguing it unsuitable because it widdles a
little in the casing.

>I am not sure either with my limited electronic hardware skills I am
>capable of retrieving the precious data from those failed pesky SSD.
>Nor I would be willing to release funds for data recovery by
>professionals.(Sigh, those people sometimes may exploit your
>situation..... and overcharge you for such )
>Might have just to reconstruct those saved information again. from
>the sources ..<sigh>
>
>Regards
>Roy
>

If I were desperate I could probably swap the flash chip
from one to another of same model in an attempt to get the
data off, but don't really think much about it or expect
that I'd ever end up doing it since I accept that anything I
don't have backed up in multiple locations is something I
must not consider valuable enough to spend the time or money
on storage to do so... but I'm loving that you can now get
1.5TB HDDs for around $100 on sale, greatly reducing the
amount of data I feel the need to put on the more
expensive/GB flash drives.