Talk:USB flash drive

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Archive
Archives
/Archive 1 * /Archive 2
USB flash drive was a good article nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There are suggestions below for improving the article. Once these are addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Reviewed version: April 25, 2006


Contents

[edit] What causes flash memory to wear out?

What exactly is going on inside a flash memory disk that causes it to wear out after the 10,000-100,000 rewrites? A friend of mine who is very experienced with computers said that it melds or blows apart a connection on the chip, and that over time it just wears out and stops working. On the other hand I thought it used MOSFET/Capacitor cells (But then wouldnt the charge leak?) And if that IS the case, what is causing this wear? I mean if somthing like this wears out, why not say... a central processor? Dont those use MOSFETs and capacitors in its cicuitry?

Any help on this matter would be appreciated. -Weylin —24.121.133.77 05:34, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Everything wears out over time, but usb flash drives made today wont wear out even with the continues use for several years. From corsair:


"-Will my Corsair USB Flash drive last more than 10 years?

Yes. All Corsair flash drives are built with memory components that can handle AT LEAST 10,000 write cycles; typically they will handle an order of magnitude more than this. So, this means that in order to exhaust the drive in ten years, one would have to write to EVERY BLOCK in the device about 2.7 times per day, every single day. We simply can’t conceive of such a usage scenario; this would mean that on a fairly typical 8 GByte drive, one would need to write over 21 GBytes of data to it every day for ten years! USB flash drives simply are not used in this way."

Others companies have similar numbers.

[edit] Improper USB ports can destroy drive

"Improperly wired USB ports can also destroy the circuitry of a flash drive, a danger in home-built desktop PCs."

This line while partly true has a flaw. The "danger" in home built PC's. When connecting USB ports in a home built PC, you connect a jumper that has some sort of idiot-proofing to ensure the cable is inserted correctly thus making it almost impossible to incorrectly wire a USB port. I'm making the change to the line now. —65.13.47.14 (talk) 23:55, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Retrofit topic headers

17-March-2008: I have grouped the older topics above using level-1 headers as "Topics from 2005" (etc.) to emphasize age of topics. Older topics might still apply, but using the tactic of yearly headers to note the age helps avoid rehashing old news, without archiving any ongoing issues. Also, new topics are more likely to be added to the bottom, not top. In sorting years, I moved "Flash drives don't work on some computers" down to Jan. 2007. -Wikid77 (talk) 05:08, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Over 29 titles redirected here

17-March-2008: The following redirect to "USB flash drive":

USB flash drives (plural), pen drive, pen drives, pendrive, pendrives, thumb drive, thumb drives, thumbdrive, thumbdrives, jump drives (not "jump drive"), JumpDrive, key drive, key drives, keydrive, keydrives, DiskOnKey, pocket drive, USB flash memory, USB key, Flashdisk, USB stick, USB memory stick, USB flash memory drive, USB hard drive, flash key, memory key, Clip drive, disk on key, usb memory card, usb memory, etc.

All those name variations were created due to the importance of the article, as some consider USB flash drives as making floppies obsolete. Plus, all those names have thousands or millions of search-engine hits, with "pocket drive" having 182,000 Google hits, "clip drive" having 36,500 hits. A less common subject would not warrant 29 aliases. -Wikid77 (talk) 06:07, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

looks good but please do not add alternative names to the main article. As you list above there are at least a dozen common alternatives and at least 30 other terms that are used and if one is added then proponents of the others want them listed to. Rather than ended up with a giant list (which is what we had at one point See here ) - SimonLyall (talk) 04:53, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] What does "speed 120X" mean?

I think the article needs a more complete explanation about the speeds of current drives. Also in the sentence "The highest current overall file transfer speeds are about 10-60 MB/s", 10-60 MB/s is a too wide range... --Lefter 12:28, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

The problem is that the claimed maximum speed of USB 2.0 is 54 mbits/sec, but it's pratically impossible to cap that out. It's more realistic to to see 10-15. 66.215.20.28 (talk) 23:20, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! But I meant the max. speed of the flash chips itself not the USB 2.0 port. The article states that with most drives the speed of the flash chip is much lower than the max. speed of USB 2.0. Also I have met on the Internet specifications like "speed 120X" but I cannot find anywhere what speed 1X equals. Is it Floppy, USB, CD-ROM, or DVD speed? I think it would be nice if someone adds this to the article. --Lefter 12:33, 3 June 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lefter (talk • contribs)

It's based on the CD-ROM speed rating, where 1X = 150 kB/s. -- Coneslayer (talk) 13:00, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] New Picture

Hi, I made a photo of my own Toshiba TransMemory Flash drive and feel like adding it on here to give the photos a consistent quality to them. I'll replace the the current photo of the black Flash Drive next to a ruler , which is a bit unaesthetic and rustic in my opinion, (and the first picture already has a ruler for comparison) with my own. Tell me what you think, if you want to replace it, feel free to bring it up here and go ahead. Thanks

Gamer112 (talk) 18:54, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] JFFS/YAFFS

Spoon recently added a line stating that JFFS2 and YAFFS2 are useful on a UFD. However, my understanding is that these systems are mainly useful on flash memory that can be directly accessed (e.g. SmartMedia through a raw reader), by assisting with wear levelling, cacheing, etc. However, a UFD abstracts the memory structure, and its controller provides similar intermediate features, such that these filesystems shouldn't make a significant difference.

Unless anyone objects (and has persuasive evidence that JFFS2 or YAFFS2 provide advantages over other filesystems on a UFD), I'm going to remove the sentence. EJSawyer (talk) 07:00, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Running web applications

I added the content below about running web applications, which I think is useful and significant information (and referenced), but is was removed by this edit, with an irrelevant edit summary about ¨running mail servers¨. Rather then a preemptive revert, I think this is worthy of discussion here. If mail servers are worth mentioning also, then they can be too. Any comment from other editors on this? Peter Campbell 13:18, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

The way I see it is that Flash drives are several gigabytes these days and most computers will boot off them. So you can pretty easily create a flash drive that any machine will boot that will do anything a normal computer will. Thus I don't really think there is a need for individual sections on Web server/mail server/Video game simulator/media server/tourist kiosk/inventory controller/tax filer/voting machine "on a bootable USB flash drive". Perhaps a series of examples - SimonLyall (talk) 20:21, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
Yes, that is the way you see it, but many are unaware of the versatility of flash drives and what you can actually run on them, so I think this content adds value and depth to the article. By all means expand the list if other compelling applications and examples are around. I don't think many would be too interesed in running a mail server, but quite a few people may be interested in having a local blog or wiki for testing or personal use. Peter Campbell 13:45, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Running web applications

A web server such as XAMPP can be loaded onto a USB drive and used to run Apache HTTP Server, MySQL database, and interpreters for scripts written in the PHP and Perl programming languages.[1] Such a platform can then run web applications loaded onto the same USB drive such as: