Pendrive Lifespan?

Mr E

I got 3 pendrives from eBay last June (one for me, and one each for 2 friends of mine), and in the last week, 2 of them died.

Is there a lifespan for flash memory (ie a certain number of copies before they fail?). Is there anything I can do to revive it? (When I plug it in, its still picked up as a USB drive, but I can't access the data or copy data onto it)

- Dave.

Orionetheus

I got one last year around sepetember and it lasted me until november of the following year..........it depends how you treat it (physically)

Stark

TmB wrote:

I got 3 pendrives from eBay last June (one for me, and one each for 2 friends of mine), and in the last week, 2 of them died.

Is there a lifespan for flash memory (ie a certain number of copies before they fail?). Is there anything I can do to revive it? (When I plug it in, its still picked up as a USB drive, but I can't access the data or copy data onto it)

- Dave.

Usually if they die it's because some critical filesystem data got corrupted as opposed to something physically wrong. Have you tried running the Pendrive's format utility on it? (You can get the format utility for the TwinMOS drives off www.twinmos.com , not sure about other models).

Boro

I find not sitting on them generally extends their lifetime. Shame no-one told me

Gryzor

got a trancend one last week...10 years span or 100,000 write...thats according to the instructions anyway...

Lemming

I've had a TwinMOS beastie for about the last 2/3 years and it's working just fine.

Creamy Goodness

have a twinmos 512mb usb2 one, that i've had for about 2 years, still going strong after some abuse and being put through the washing machine

Mac daddy

i have had my little one for about a year and a half now it has been left in jeans that have been washed several times at least 5,

Still have no problems with it best 50 euro's i have sent.

Static M.e.

I have one the first Dell ones 64 Mb been on my keys for the last 5 years still works perfect