Flash Disk

[Jeckgo]

greetings...

how many times i burned a flash disk, maybe bcuz am using it in Mac and then PC...? is it true??? or maybe bcuz am not using it properly??? or maybe bcuz am buying a cheap flash disk...

Is there any suggestion which is the best USB flash disk to buy...?

[vanman]

Be a bit more specific..I have been using flash disks for a while now and nothing serious like that has happened so..Give us more detail like your operating system ,what machine p4,amd ??ram..,hdd drive size , cmos settings would be helpfull as well...Trying to determine what voltages your mobo is set to etc..

[Katja]

You should not light your USB flash devices with a match or burn them i any other way...

I don't have a Mac so I don't know if it could be a problem if you continuously swap them between two different systems. I do have plenty of flash devices, including memory cards, pen drives and whatever more. So far I haven't had any of them burn down. Getting them to burn down seems pretty difficult even in my opinion. Could it be that you're handling these devices in an improper way? For example, do you store them in your back pocket? Or in the freezer? Or on top of your monitor where it can be very warm? Do you leave them in your car while it's parked in the sun? Or do you drop them in your aquarium once in a while? Do you store them in a humid environment? Is it extremely dusty at your place? Have you tried opening those devices to look at the inside? Have you thrown them against the wall? Did your dog eat them and did you have to wait for it to get out the natural way? Did you spill coffee over it? Did you electrocute yourself while holding the device? Is there a lot of static electricity at your place?

There are many reasons for a flash device to just commit hara-kiri. It doesn't have to be related to the machines that you are using. For your next flash device, make sure it has a strong container around it and store it in a safe place, preferably in a area at room temperature.

[nihil]

how many times i burned a flash disk

What exactly do you mean by that? Is it that the device just stops working? Can you see it in your hardware? Do you get any messages when you attempt to access it?

Does they die after connection to the PC, the Apple, or about even?

I do hope you are mounting/dismounting them in accordance with the instructions. Just pulling it out without going through the dismounting procedure is a good way to kill them. You can be lucky for a while then......................

[Aspman]

I do hope you are mounting/dismounting them in accordance with the instructions

As Nihil says that's the normal way to break them.

Make sure that at least the activity light is off before you pull it out. Better still if you are using XP remember to left click on the 'safely remove hardware' icon at the bottom right and click to remove your USB storage device.

Don't rush transferring your data, the disk can still be actively writing after Windows tells you it is 100%.

Apart from that I don't know what you could be doing. They're quite tough little devices and I know a few people who have put theirs through the wash and got them back still working.

[Jeckgo]

yes... i dismounting it by pulling the flash disk after it finished copying.
so, next time i will follow the intructions of mounting and dismounting of flash disk.
is it possible also that maybe bcuz my flash disk is cheap?

Anyway thanks for all your suggestions...

[Und3ertak3r]

getting a collection of jump drives that are "dead" seems from as nihil commented.. bad disconnections.. seems to corrupt the FAT.. some time to the point that some systems deem the drive completly unusable..
have managed to Kill one properly.. had a custom built machine with the USB port wired reverse.. smoked.. left a hole in the side of thge addressing chip.. and I suspect the flash ram was cooked as well.. interesting how in the computer industry we trust our hardware standards, trust them to the point of not putting simple reverse polarity protection into the devices..

[nihil]

is it possible also that maybe bcuz my flash disk is cheap?

Not really.............................some of the more expensive ones might be slightly more robust, but it is the routine of correctly dismounting USB storage devices that is important

[Katja]

No... Cheap disks or expensive disks are all pretty similar. They don't break that easily unless they are abused by their owner. (E.g. by pulling them out of the device before they're dismounted.) The main difference is that a cheap disk might break a bit sooner than a more expensive one if they used some cheaper material around the flash chips. But in general the chips used in those flash devices are produced by the same factories and tend to be very strong.

[Nokia]

Hey, well done Katja for saying the exact same thing nihil said!