Thumbdrive died

[Ambrosia7177]

I sepnt a good portion of yesterday afternoon doing research nline and saving some articles and screen-shots onto my trusty thumb-drive so I could save them on my other Mac.

It appears that my thumbdrive "gave up the ghost".

Can't say that I have ever had that happen before - maybe I have just been lucky?

Can anyone think of any way I could access my thumbdrive one last time to get that research off of it? (I lost a couple of hours of work!)

I tried inserting this thumbdrive into both Macs and even a Windows notebook, but the drive won't apepar, so I assume that I am screwed...

Thanks.

 

[satcomer]

Sometimes newer SSDs in cheap ones just seem to die sometimes!

 

[Ambrosia7177]

Sometimes newer SSDs in cheap ones just seem to die sometimes!

Well, this thumbdrive is probably 2-3 years old, so it's not completely surprising.

I just have never gotten burned where the only copy of my work was on the thumbdrive?!

This old Mac still has lots of software that doesn't work on my newer Retina, and it is also very messy, so when Ia m in a hurry I just sometimes stick in that thumbdrive, do what I need to do, then transfer it to my Retina.

Crappy workflow, I know, but it is what it is!

So no luck in a recovery, huh?

 

[satcomer]

Yea with SSDs it seems you get what you pay for lately, I’m sorry to say!

 

[Ambrosia7177]

Yea with SSDs it seems you get what you pay for lately, I’m sorry to say!

To be clear, this thread is about a thumbdrive, not a SSD.

(SSD = solid-state drive, HDD = convential hard-drive)

I'm not sure how to tell between "high end" USB drives and "low end" ones, considering they are all prety much a commodity.

Well, at least I didn't lose anything really mission-critical.

 

[satcomer]

Yea if you future proof your Thumb drive then look at the Samsung Duo Plus or others if you want!

 

[Ambrosia7177]

Yea if you future proof your Thumb drive then look at the Samsung Duo Plus or others if you want!

Interesting drive. (Great until you lose the adapter!)

So what do you think is the lifespan for an average USB drive? I would guess 4-5 years.

For my HDDs and SSDs, I write the first-used date on them with a Sharpie. A little harder to do on a USB drive.

 

[rui no onna]

So what do you think is the lifespan for an average USB drive? I would guess 4-5 years.

For my HDDs and SSDs, I write the first-used date on them with a Sharpie. A little harder to do on a USB drive.

Luck of the draw. Nowadays, I tend to stick to Samsung and SanDisk.

The more you write to the flash drive though, the shorter the lifespan particularly if you write to the same area over and over (e.g. when flash drive is close to full). I don't think most flash drives have advanced wear leveling techniques like SSDs do (that is if they even have it at all).

Heat's another killer if you tend to keep flash drives plugged in for long periods.

I use PortableApps and both Chrome and Firefox hit drives pretty hard (lots of small block writes/rewrites). I was killing an 8GB Kingston DataTraveler DT101 G2 (red, swivel-type) every 6-8 months so for the past 5+ years, I've been repurposing old SSDs for use as "flash drives" (Intel X25-V 40GB -> Intel X25-M 120GB -> Samsung 830 256GB -> Samsung 840 EVO 1TB).

RAM, higher quality NAND flash chips and advanced wear leveling gives SSDs better performance and longevity than typical flash drives. All of the SSDs mentioned are at 95+% health. I just needed more storage.

 

[Ambrosia7177]

@rui no onna,

Thanks for the thoughts.

I think the main place I failed was losing track of how old this USB drive was.

I just use it for mundance things like copying files between my Macs and most usually to go make coies at FedEx.

In the future, I should make sure I save original work onto my Mac first, and then copy to the thumbdrive.

And, when I travel I guess I should make sure I have a couple of USB drives in hand in case one dies when I really need it.

 

[Fishrrman]

And I thought you were "security minded"...?

Here's how I usually do it:

On my laptop, I have a folder on the desktop named "To Mini".

When I have a file created on the laptop that I need to move to the Mini (my "main Mac"), I connect a flashdrive and copy the "To Mini" folder to the flashdrive.

BUT... I leave the files in question in the "To Mini" folder on the laptop for the time being.

Then, I take the flashdrive to the Mini, and copy the files where needed.

FINALLY, I go back to the laptop, and then delete the files in the "To Mini" folder, once they've been "safely moved"...

Having said that, sometimes USB flash drives just "go dark" on you.
Once they do, good luck on ever getting them to work again.

I've had the same thing happen with 2.5" SATA SSDs, as well.

 

[Ambrosia7177]

And I thought you were "security minded"...?

I am, but even I cut corners sometimes...

Here's how I usually do it:

On my laptop, I have a folder on the desktop named "To Mini".

When I have a file created on the laptop that I need to move to the Mini (my "main Mac"), I connect a flashdrive and copy the "To Mini" folder to the flashdrive.

BUT... I leave the files in question in the "To Mini" folder on the laptop for the time being.

Then, I take the flashdrive to the Mini, and copy the files where needed.

FINALLY, I go back to the laptop, and then delete the files in the "To Mini" folder, once they've been "safely moved"...

Yes, that is a workflow that I would normally follow, but stuff happens.

In this case, I was just going to transfer a single .pdf file, and then I got to researching for an article, found a bunch of gems online, went down the rabiithole of the Internet, saved a bunch of stuff on the fly to my thumbdrive, and this time I got burned.

Another thing is that this old Mac is so messy with data - largely due to a HDD crash and partial recovery in 2016 that got filed away haphazardly - that I don't have a clean working space/home directory/desktop like on my Retina, so I often inclined to just save to thumbdrive.

I totally need to get my data over to my Retina - which has like a GB left on it anyway - and upgrade/clean up this old Mac. But who has the time?

Having said that, sometimes USB flash drives just "go dark" on you.
Once they do, good luck on ever getting them to work again.

I've had the same thing happen with 2.5" SATA SSDs, as well.

I've had lots of HDD crashes over my lifetime, but I don't thnk I've ever gotten burned on a thumbdrive until now.

Good reminder to always have a backup!

 

[CooperBox]

Interesting drive. (Great until you lose the adapter!)

So what do you think is the lifespan for an average USB drive? I would guess 4-5 years.

For my HDDs and SSDs, I write the first-used date on them with a Sharpie. A little harder to do on a USB drive.

Your question on the lifespan for an average USB thumbdrive is an interesting one.
The very first one I bought was in Asia in 2002 with a new Titanium PowerBook. It had a 'huge' storage capacity for the time of 64MB, yes that's MB not GB! And being USB 1.1 the transfer rate was not what we're used to today, although it did everything I wanted of it. It was used frequently for a good many years and still performs well even today with that same PowerBook and a similar period Apple Cube G4, i.e still going strong after 18 years service.
From what I recall it was expensive, possibly a high-end model which may account for why it still functions well even today. And I agree with an earlier comment that you often get what you pay for. Today I reckon you can't go wrong with a Samsung or SanDisk model.

 

[Ambrosia7177]

still going strong after 18 years service.

From what I recall it was expensive, possibly a high-end model which may account for why it still functions well even today. And I agree with an earlier comment that you often get what you pay for. Today I reckon you can't go wrong with a Samsung or SanDisk model.

Can't beat 18 years!

The drive that died is a Kingston Kingston DTSE9 - 8GB drive and I liked it because it was tiny without all that rubber junk around it. These drives slip in anywhere.

But I suppose Kingston isn't the best quality.

For my bootable recovery USB drives, I use a Corsair Voyager 3.0 - 64GB drive because those should be better quality.


Moving forward I'll likely keep using the tiny Kingston drives, but just follow the workflow @Fishrrman suggested which is what I would normally do if I'm not being lazy!