Dr Skip drskip@gmail.com wrote:
>Question for the group:

>4 GB usb jump drives are at a good price point, and I've found 4 GB 
>micro-disks, also usb, at very close to the same price. When off, both are 
>essentially shockproof, and when plugged in will have no real shock. It then 
>really boils down to storage mechanism for reliability comparison. The disk is 
>old familiar technology with no write-limited lifetime. Flash is maintained at 
>a smaller atomic scale and maybe susceptible to airport x-rays perhaps? Maybe 
>bit flipping from some errant particle?

>If given the choice for important day to day use, or important archival use, 
>which would you use?

>Thanks,
>Skip

I use many USB jump drives day to day and have years of experience with them
I have only broken one , it was plugged in my laptop when i put it away and the
entire weight of the laptop was on it (broke the plug of the board. I soldered it
back on salvaging the data.
 
I even managed to put some of them through a washer/dryer cycle several times without
ill effects other than losing some of the finish.
 
That said I never have important data only on a jump drive. When moving data to
other machines I always leave the original until I have the data on the target.

I just bought two new Kingston jump drives at buy.com $19.95 for 4Gb they are
getting cheaper all the time.

I also use a usb harddrive but this is a larger 160Gb Western Digital Passport drive
just fits in your pocket but I have found it to be unreliable in powered hubs.
It seems to like root hubs probably due to exessive power usage.
If I keep this requirement in mind it works very nice (though I don't mistreat it as I
do with thumb drives).
 
Peter van Hoof
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