Err. while I agree with the other points, this one is just plain rubbish.
A 250GB hard drive is well under $100 in most markets now, but a
comparable amout of flash (for backups) is way WAY more expensive.

Cheers

Err. while I agree with the other points, this one is just plain rubbish.
A 250GB hard drive is well under $100 in most markets now, but a
comparable amout of flash (for backups) is way WAY more expensive.

Cheers

I heard some stories that USB flash drive can be a dangerous device for secure backup. It can damage your data without a notice. First, compare flash disk to legacy hard disk. When a data is damaged, you will receive a warning that a sector cannot be read. In the case of flash disk, it is different, there is no warning when your data are damaged!! It is even possible, that in one millisecond, several “sectors” at your flash disk are damaged. Several sectors can be overwritten without notice (you write to sector 123 but there is an electrical or firmware problem and other sectors are overwritten too. It is difficult to detect such random corruptions when you store data to common filesystem (FAT, NTFS, ext3). You noticed in the article that number of writes is limited and in some time sectors at flash disk can die. Is there a support in your OS to detect and workaround “damaged” sectors?

Most of issues with legacy hard disks were already addressed (SMART, sector reallocation, etc). USB flash disks are at the begging of this journey jet. We don't have file system that will address data corruption and sector reallocation. Be very careful when you store your important files to USB flash drive… Add some checksum, maybe store files to ZIP archive (ZIP archive has embedded checksum), maybe store files in several copies.

I heard some stories that USB flash drive can be a dangerous device for secure backup. It can damage your data without a notice. First, compare flash disk to legacy hard disk. When a data is damaged, you will receive a warning that a sector cannot be read. In the case of flash disk, it is different, there is no warning when your data are damaged!! It is even possible, that in one millisecond, several “sectors” at your flash disk are damaged. Several sectors can be overwritten without notice (you write to sector 123 but there is an electrical or firmware problem and other sectors are overwritten too. It is difficult to detect such random corruptions when you store data to common filesystem (FAT, NTFS, ext3). You noticed in the article that number of writes is limited and in some time sectors at flash disk can die. Is there a support in your OS to detect and workaround “damaged” sectors?

Most of issues with legacy hard disks were already addressed (SMART, sector reallocation, etc). USB flash disks are at the begging of this journey jet. We don't have file system that will address data corruption and sector reallocation. Be very careful when you store your important files to USB flash drive… Add some checksum, maybe store files to ZIP archive (ZIP archive has embedded checksum), maybe store files in several copies.