Subj : Life Expectancy of Flash Memory Drives
To   : comp.os.linux,comp.os.linux.setup,comp.os.linux.help,comp.os.linux.admin
From : Kenneth Lantrip
Date : Wed Jun 30 2004 10:45 am

Yesterday, my PNY Atache flash memory stick drive started to fail on me. 
It can read all files just fine. So I managed to tar all the files into 
a backup.

I can reformat it in Win2000 or Knoppix just fine. But when putting 
files (of any kind) onto it will lock up the computer (W2k or Knoppix) 
every time after about a minute or so of writing to the device. It does 
this on two different computers that I've tried.

Conclusion: The drive is bad.

My query is: Does anyone know about how long one should expect one of 
these type drives to last under daily use as a Knoppix persistant home 
directory? Anyone know of any utilities to lock out a bad memory 
cell/sector?

I thought since these things don't have moving parts (other than moving 
from place to place) they should last quite a while and be very reliable 
from data loss. Guess I was wrong.

Anyone else run into problems with flash memory?

Thanks.

Kenneth Lantrip

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