Over the past year or so, I have had an alarmingly high number of USB flash drives fail into "read only" mode. Something like six or more. These varied from cheap Chinese eBay stuff to name brands pretty much equally. So, I got to thinking: How many have failed on me over the last decade or so. Practically none that I can recall. What has changed in manufacture or design that might account for this or is it just coincidental.
I did a search using Startpage, and Duck Duck Go, and didn't find anything that might validate my observations. Please tell me, am I imagining this or is it a real phenomenon? Have any of you noticed increased failure rates of USB flash drives.
There is a motivation to try to get users to migrate from external storage to the cloud. I'm not comfortable with that. I'm strictly VFR. No clouds, low, and slow.
Thanks for any insights you might choose to offer.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Thursday January 31 2019, @06:08AM
messymerry said they're readable, so I doubt wiggling the connector will make them writable.
But it's generally a good suggestion; re-seating connectors is too often the cure to a problem. I've repaired many hard drives that developed tarnish on the contacts between the controller board and the disk head amp connector. I'm a big fan of silicone grease on connectors.