Readyboost - Good At Destroying USB Drives?

[Bob Huntley]

Hi,

I installed Vista on Thursday last week (same day I received my express
upgrade from XP MCE), and after it confirming that it was all working
inserted a brand new 2 GB USB Stick to use as the Readyboost feature. The
USB Stick was a Buffalo FireStix (which I'd chosen specifically for this
given its very fast read/write speeds).

Yesterday, it stopped working - and the USB shows 0 Bytes used out of a
capacity of 0 on every PC I've tried it on, won't format etc. - and so has
turned into a paper weight in three days. Could be a manufacturing fault of
course, but I'm wondering if the constant access cycles caused by Readyboost
(I'm currently using an old Verbatim stick, and the access light flashes a
very high percentage of the time) are enough to stress a disk beyond its
design limits.

Would welcome anyone else's experience - is my experience of Readyboost
going to be typical.

Bob,

 

[Terry]

On 4/2/2007 11:46 AM On a whim, Bob Huntley pounded out on the keyboard

Hi,

I installed Vista on Thursday last week (same day I received my express
upgrade from XP MCE), and after it confirming that it was all working
inserted a brand new 2 GB USB Stick to use as the Readyboost feature. The
USB Stick was a Buffalo FireStix (which I'd chosen specifically for this
given its very fast read/write speeds).

Yesterday, it stopped working - and the USB shows 0 Bytes used out of a
capacity of 0 on every PC I've tried it on, won't format etc. - and so has
turned into a paper weight in three days. Could be a manufacturing fault of
course, but I'm wondering if the constant access cycles caused by Readyboost
(I'm currently using an old Verbatim stick, and the access light flashes a
very high percentage of the time) are enough to stress a disk beyond its
design limits.

Would welcome anyone else's experience - is my experience of Readyboost
going to be typical.

Bob,

Hi Bob,

That's an interesting point to bring up. Sisoft Sandra has a File
System check that will test your drive compared to other devices. It
includes a "Endurance Factor" test which is described as:

"Endurance Factor: is a figure representing the Wear and Life Expectancy
of flash devices; this is obtained by dividing the average performance
(normal condition, i.e. sequential write) to the lowest performance
(high-stress condition, i.e. same block re-write). It measures the
relative improvement of endurance caused by the wear leveling or flash
management algorithm; the absolute endurance of a device (i.e. its
expected life-time) is directly dependent, in addition to this Endurance
Factor, on the nominal manufacturer rating of maximum erase/reprogram
cycles, which is typically 100,000+ for SLC and 10,000+ for MLC devices.
(Higher is better, i.e. longer life-time for the device)"

Only time will tell whether this will be an actual concern or not I guess.

--
Terry

***Reply Note***
Anti-spam measures are included in my email address.
Delete NOSPAM from the email address after clicking Reply.

 

[Richard Urban]

I have been using the same SanDisk Micro USB thumb drive for about 4 months
now. So far so good.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban MVP
Microsoft Windows Shell/User

 

[Dale White]

I think you have a fluke device. I have an OCZ Rally 2, that I 've copied
4GB of data back and forth numerous times and it's still trucking. Depending
in the Manufacture, they average life is around 100,000 write\erases (some
claim 1,000,000). A Microsoft article I read on this said they try to make
it so you wouldn't wear out the drive any faster than normal use (whatever
that means). I'd expect a flash drive to last at least 1 year, so claim with
average use, they should last "up to" 10

Unless you're you only have like 512MB of ram, You're probably not writing
that much to the device are you ?

 

[Norbert]

I've been using a Kingston 1gig for about a month. Thing never seems to be
idle; its activity indicator is flashing constantly.

Maybe your drive was just the inevitable dud that comes along once in a
while.


Regards,

 

[Chupacabra]

I've been using a Kingston 1GB DataTraveler for about 6 months with
ReadyBoost and so far it's holding up OK.

 

[jonah]

Hi,

I installed Vista on Thursday last week (same day I received my express
upgrade from XP MCE), and after it confirming that it was all working
inserted a brand new 2 GB USB Stick to use as the Readyboost feature. The
USB Stick was a Buffalo FireStix (which I'd chosen specifically for this
given its very fast read/write speeds).

Yesterday, it stopped working - and the USB shows 0 Bytes used out of a
capacity of 0 on every PC I've tried it on, won't format etc. - and so has
turned into a paper weight in three days. Could be a manufacturing fault of
course, but I'm wondering if the constant access cycles caused by Readyboost
(I'm currently using an old Verbatim stick, and the access light flashes a
very high percentage of the time) are enough to stress a disk beyond its
design limits.

Would welcome anyone else's experience - is my experience of Readyboost
going to be typical.

Bob,

Mines OK been using it for months, no idea what it is beyond I got it
free and its a Blue 2Gb USB Stick.

Jonah

 

[Lang Murphy]

Hi,

I installed Vista on Thursday last week (same day I received my express
upgrade from XP MCE), and after it confirming that it was all working
inserted a brand new 2 GB USB Stick to use as the Readyboost feature. The
USB Stick was a Buffalo FireStix (which I'd chosen specifically for this
given its very fast read/write speeds).

Yesterday, it stopped working - and the USB shows 0 Bytes used out of a
capacity of 0 on every PC I've tried it on, won't format etc. - and so has
turned into a paper weight in three days. Could be a manufacturing fault
of course, but I'm wondering if the constant access cycles caused by
Readyboost (I'm currently using an old Verbatim stick, and the access
light flashes a very high percentage of the time) are enough to stress a
disk beyond its design limits.

Would welcome anyone else's experience - is my experience of Readyboost
going to be typical.

Bob,

Bob,

Check out this page:
http://blogs.msdn.com/tomarcher/archive/2006/06/02/615199.aspx

Has a lot of good info on ReadyBoost, straight from the horse's mouth, so to
speak.

Lang

 

[alancoates]

USB sticks destroyed by ReadyBoost
I don't believe this is random I've had it happen with three USB sticks on Windows 7 (Ultimate and Starter respectively on two laptops):
. a 4GB anonymous stick (from a meeting) a
. an 8GB Sony retractable advertised as compatible
. a 16MB Lexar
In the first and third cases the stick never worked and thereafter would not read and would not format.
The Sony (on Windows 7 Starter) appeared to work on the first session - much flashing and I think a slightly better performance - that laptop has only 1GB RAM - then when next inserted would not work, and would not format. i have 3 expensive if ragther light paperweights.
Any suggestions welcome, even if only to salvage the sticks as USB memory.
Alan Coates