Reliability of USB (thumb drives)

[Slayer]

Was curious about some of you all's USB thumb drive stories.
Here's mine
I was cleaning out my truck this morning, because my boy has decided to buy it for almost nothing, (hey it's my kid, right thing to do).
While doing a quick clean-up, I found a small USB stick. Dirty and somewhat sticky (yuck), i couldn't even remember if it was mine or not.
So, I brought in, cleaned it up and figured I would plug it into my computer to see if it even worked. Low and behold, success, worked flawlessly.
What was more surprising was, this was about 400 songs I put on it in 2001, when I put an aftermarket stereo system in the truck.
Gotta love the reliability and longevity of these little devices.

 

[Doodski]

I have had issue with 2 thumb drives over the years. One was a old AData I think and the other was a Kingston. I liked the AData because it had a large led on the butt end that illuminated when plugged in and flashed when data was transferring. It was very difficult to accidentally leave it behind because of that LED. I presently have 5 Kingston thumb drives with one being a Kingston DataTraveler Locker+ G3 16GB. The DataTraveler G3 is a heavy solid metal construction with a LED. It has hardware encryption and the drive locks down and reformats after 10 failed login attempts, so users can rest assured their data is safe even if the drive is lost or stolen. I use it for documents so 16GB is plenty of storage.

 

[MCH]

Last summer, one day my phone said "no sd card" (??!). No water, falling, smashing, pets... involved. Nothing, just like that. Watched all websites and youtube videos "how to repair damaged sd cards". Nothing to do, gone forever. I don't trust these things anymore. Later a colleague told me old school spinning hdd tend to last much longer. Don't know if that's true.

 

[Sharpi31]

Finding a USB drive and to plugging it into your PC can be very risky (Google USB drop attack). I know this one was in your car, and probably yours, but it still makes me worry to read that!

 

[Killingbeans]

I found a thumb drive in a puddle once when I was walking down the street. The casing was mangled, but the PCB was not damaged, so I just removed the externals and plugged the bare PCB into my PC (fingers crossed it wasn't full of malicious software). Turned out it contained a dissertation from some university student. I Googled her name and found her e-mail address. She told me it was her only copy, and that she thought she would have to write the whole thing again from scratch (hard lesson in taking backups and backups of the backups). So I mailed it to her on a memory card (too big for e-mail at the time). Needless to say, that made her day.

Those little things can really take a beating. Of course, no moving parts makes a world of difference.

 

[Slayer]

Finding a USB drive and to plugging it into your PC can be very risky (Google USB drop attack). I know this one was in your car, and probably yours, but it still makes me worry to read that!

Agree, however I took the chance figuring it had to mine or one of the kids when they borrowed the truck.
Weird thing about it, today I've been comparing the recordings on this USB to Amazon HD music, and I swear the USB sounds better, maybe it's just the USb seems to have way better channel separation.

 

[Killingbeans]

Last summer, one day my phone said "no sd card" (??!). No water, falling, smashing, pets... involved. Nothing, just like that. Watched all websites and youtube videos "how to repair damaged sd cards". Nothing to do, gone forever. I don't trust these things anymore. Later a colleague told me old school spinning hdd tend to last much longer. Don't know if that's true.

This guy could probably have done it (Or do it... do you still have the card?):

https://www.youtube.com/c/hddrecoveryservices/videos

 

[MCH]

This guy could probably have done it:

https://www.youtube.com/c/hddrecoveryservices/videos

Saw him, well not sure if this exact one, but similar, sanding the chip and soldering pins under a microscope. Was charging something like 500 usd. Not worth it in my case.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Finding a USB drive and to plugging it into your PC can be very risky (Google USB drop attack). I know this one was in your car, and probably yours, but it still makes me worry to read that!

What I've done when I find such things is boot an old laptop from a Live Linux distro on a CD-R. That way you can look at the drive and have tools needed yet nothing malicious can write to the OS on the CD-R and once you turn it off all is gone.

 

[Killingbeans]

Saw him, well not sure if this exact one, but similar, sanding the chip and soldering pins under a microscope. Was charging something like 500 usd. Not worth it in my case.

Good point

I have had issue with 2 thumb drives over the years.

I think I've had one or two die as well. One of them was just me bricking it when messing around with the file system and not having a clue, the other must have been some random hardware failure.

But I still have my old OCZ Rally2 Turbo (4GB). Best USB 2.0 drive I've ever owned.

 

[Doodski]

But I still have my old OCZ Rally2 Turbo (4GB). Best USB 2.0 drive I've ever owned.

Nice. It has a LED too. Looks like a nice amber glowing sorta old school neon coloration LED.