Guide Take care of ur pen drive

well guys now a days pen drives are really cheap and have become most sought after ways of data transfer. below are some points to just have a look at

1. life

only thing(apart from normal wear and tear) the affects life of a usb drive is write cycles.

u can read data from a drive any no of times u want but writing a data to it will decrease its life by a bit.
writing includes deleting/defragmenting etc.
thus unless sufficient space is not left in ur drive for ur new file , DONOT delete old data from it , just insert more new data.

2 defragment

unlike normal hard disks with moving spindles , pen drives do not have slow and fast zones.
data kept anywhere will be read at same speed in a pen drive.
thus NEVER defrag ur pen drive as it introduces one more write cycle and reduce life of ur pen drive (by just a little bit).

also usb drives don't have any head that needs to move its position (thus wasting time to read a fragmented file on an a hard drive drive)

so no need whatsoever to defrag ur usb(or any other solid state drives)
3. safely remove ur external drive

well speed of hd is much faster than pen drive
thus when u transfer data to ur pen drive , to speed things up , some of the data may be "cached" by ur os.

thus when the dialogue box showing file transfer to pen drive has vanished , the data may not have been completely written to pen drive.
that is why whenever u copy something to ur pen drive u must always make sure that u "safely remove the hardware" just to be sure that all data has been transferred.

when u are reading from ur pen drive , no such thing occurs , thus the moment the transfer dialog is complete , u can simply take out ur pen drive without any fear of data corruption.

thus always "safely remove hardware" when u copy something to ur pen drive , else it is not necessary
4. file systems

default is fat 32
some guys prefer ntfs , linux geeks may try out ext3.

well these journaled file systems carry no real benefit in terms of data security.
but they have a lot of overhead in terms of journaling , keeping extra record bout files etc.

this again introduces useless write cycles which again is bad for life for ur pen drive.

preferable file systems ----- fat32 / ext2 .

5. viruses

these can be avoided by
a-> using linux:rofl:
b-> using hips(comodo defence+)

else on windows , always disable autorun of removable drives from "tweakui"
also keep anti virus updated .

well if u must , transfer data from a pc u know is already "infected"(college pc/net cafe's) then

1. shut down "infected" pc
2. boot into ubuntu installer's live disk
3. now attach ur pen drive and transfer data happily!!

or else if u can , make urself a bootable ubuntu pen drive.
simply boot into it and do what u want fearlessly

 

[main_trouble]

nicely said techie

 

[Vulc4n]

EDIT: Also, U need to save the bill till then

Thats the part that sucks man... Think I may have lost the bill already There should be a better way... Some serial number which should tell them when the drive was made or something...

 

[techie_007]

Thats the part that sucks man... Think I may have lost the bill already There should be a better way... Some serial number which should tell them when the drive was made or something...

hehe..thats teh whole point. Just like Mail-in-rebates in the US They know >70% are not gonna claim the rebates

Similarly, how many ppl ll have the bill for something like a flash drive after a yr, let alone 10 :rofl: Thank GOD for HDD companies like seagate.

 

[hi.dkt2008]

nice guide .. dint know this .. useful points to remember

 

[Dark Star]

Whats so funny in using Linux ? :S

Nice guide though !

 

[ballistic]

I once read about some utility that is installed on the flash drive itself and prevents infection.

Any ideas if this is useful?

 

[nirvanasoul]

but i love virus:hap2: :hap2:

 

[Bluffmaster]

^Idiot.

Anyways, as someone already mentioned booting from an OS is too much work just to copy or read some files. There has to be a better way of dealing with viruses. Most Anti-virus softwares are pretty useless when it comes to detecting a virus in a pendrive. Any software specially designed to deal with pen drive viruses ?
Btw... if you have got a virus in your pen drive from an infected PC there is a way to remove it without infecting your PC. Just boot from your windows OS and format your pendrive from the bios. If you try to format after logging in , your PC will be infected irrespective of whether you format your pendrive or not.

 

[main_trouble]

Whats so funny in using Linux ? :S

Nice guide though !

Nothing is funny in using linux .

funny part is , if u use it , u do not have to worry about viruses .

 

[techie_007]

^Idiot.

Anyways, as someone already mentioned booting from an OS is too much work just to copy or read some files. There has to be a better way of dealing with viruses. Most Anti-virus softwares are pretty useless when it comes to detecting a virus in a pendrive. Any software specially designed to deal with pen drive viruses ?
Btw... if you have got a virus in your pen drive from an infected PC there is a way to remove it without infecting your PC. Just boot from your windows OS and format your pendrive from the bios. If you try to format after logging in , your PC will be infected irrespective of whether you format your pendrive or not.

False info :no:

Ur system gets infected ONLY if Auto-run is enabled, which is why most ppl ask you to disable it as a security measure

Any decent anti-virus ill catch it when you try to access/copy over the files.

 

[Bluffmaster]

^The Pen drive viruses keep on changing maybe thats why my anti virus is not able to detect them. And maybe you are right about the auto run part. I did have Auto run enabled so maybe thats what infected my PC. But some viruses make it impossible to format your pen drive from the OS , formatting via booting from OS remains the only option in such cases.

 

[clown_abhi]

Well, if u have an anti virus which can't detect a virus on any external media, then its pretty much useless since most viruses travel on external drives.

Moreover, any anti virus which lets a virus reside on the PC which would avoid the format of ur drive, then why is the antivirus dere?

I am using Norton IS 2009 and it pretty much detects everything, also keygens for ahem versions...

 

[techie_007]

^The Pen drive viruses keep on changing maybe thats why my anti virus is not able to detect them. And maybe you are right about the auto run part. I did have Auto run enabled so maybe thats what infected my PC. But some viruses make it impossible to format your pen drive from the OS , formatting via booting from OS remains the only option in such cases.

As mentioned above, that will happen ONLY if ur PC is already affected (it wont let u format). In that case, ur already in trouble and formatting the pen drive isnt going to solve any of ur problems

 

[Bluffmaster]

^Yeah but atleast the pen drive will be safe to use o other computers

 

[amitsahuji]

good work it would be quite helpfull

 

[roadrippersid]

thanks for your effort..

 

[?dOuBtFiRe?]

Thanks for the effort in Compiling your observations

Its really usefull

 

[sickizblank]

LOL is it guide ??? or precautions, whatever nice effort, better than nothing.

What's 'LOL' in that man?
Please appreciate the efforts mate.
Oh and GJ main_trouble. :clap:

 

[..:: Free Radical ::..]

Most flash drives have an LED which shows any data activity whether the flash drive is being read/written. if you are not using an indexing filesystem like ntfs/ext3, especially if you have indexing disabled, or have made the drive read only, it is ok to directly remove the drive without the "safely remove hardware" prompt though it is not recommended.

I would also suggest the use of FAT16 over FAT32 for bootable flash drives (though there is a partition size limit) as it is less strenuous on the flash drive and less liable to get corrupted.

 

[Aries]

nice guide although