Guide Take care of ur pen drive

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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
 
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..:: Free Radical ::.. said:
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.
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LED can flash on any reason

can be due to read / write (no way to know)
for example
1. indexing
2. certain programmes (like picasa) reading from external storage
3. antivirus doing its automatic scan
4. autorun.inf causing something to b read from pen drive etc.

thus u never know what is actually happening
bottomline
if u not writing to the pen drive , not need to worry bout "safely remove hardware "

if u writing to pen drive , always do "safely remove hardware"
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For people looking for an antivirus that can detect viruses in pen drives, try this:
Mx One Antivirus - International, Powered by Ldc. Made In México.

The installation can be done in two ways.. as a routine antivirus that gets installed in the PC (will not conflict with other antiviruses, 'coz it runs a scan onl when a pen drive is inserted); or as a portable AV that can be installed into the pen drive itself..
I've tried this for the past 4 months, and it is quite efficient...

One more precaution that I usually follow with my pen drives is this:
I create an empty folder named autorun.inf in the root of the pen drive, and then change its properties to read-only, hidden and system folder through command prompt (attrib +r +h +s autorun.inf).. This is a very simple and effective protection against most viruses that create autorun.inf files in the pen drives. When this folder is present, the viruses cannot overwrite it to create an autorun.inf file, so the pen drive doesn't get infected in the first place.. :P
 
That is why I scan all my bills. Then it's always easier to find old stuff provided you've saved the file with correct name,etc.

Oh and do back up all that stuff. THe best way is to mail yourself your bills, so you will always have it on you.

Vulc4n said:
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...
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I format my pen drive whenever possible! Does that reduce its lifespan? Also "USB Safely Remove" is a damn nice tool! try that.
 
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