Does leaving my usb thumbdrive in the computer usb port decrease its life?

On 2021-09-07 5:27 p.m., Your Name wrote:
> Does leaving my usb thumbdrive in the computer usb port decrease its life?

Inserting/removing a USB thumbdrive might wear out the USB port itself
but I doubt the thumbdrive will wear itself out before at least five years.

--
@RabidHussar

On 07/09/2021 23.27, Your Name wrote:
> Does leaving my usb thumbdrive in the computer usb port decrease its life?

If you are not accessing it at all, and the thing is not warm, then it
shouldn't impact its life. But why would you have it plugged permanently?

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on Wed, 8 Sep 2021 01:02:26 +0200, "Carlos E.
R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:

>On 07/09/2021 23.27, Your Name wrote:
>> Does leaving my usb thumbdrive in the computer usb port decrease its life?
>
>If you are not accessing it at all, and the thing is not warm, then it
>shouldn't impact its life. But why would you have it plugged permanently?

Because you use it occasionally if it's not attached to something, the
mice carry it away.

On 9/7/2021 5:02 PM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
> On 07/09/2021 23.27, Your Name wrote:
>> Does leaving my usb thumbdrive in the computer usb port decrease its life?
>
> If you are not accessing it at all, and the thing is not warm, then it
> shouldn't impact its life. But why would you have it plugged permanently?

Many routers allow a USB device to be plugged into them: thumbs, hard
drives, printers, etc. These devices can be accessed by any machine on
the LAN. A thumb drive provides an inexpensive and relatively safe way
to share small amounts of data.
--
Jeff Barnett

On 08/09/2021 01.40, micky wrote:
> In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on Wed, 8 Sep 2021 01:02:26 +0200, "Carlos E.
> R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On 07/09/2021 23.27, Your Name wrote:
>>> Does leaving my usb thumbdrive in the computer usb port decrease its life?
>>
>> If you are not accessing it at all, and the thing is not warm, then it
>> shouldn't impact its life. But why would you have it plugged permanently?
>
> Because you use it occasionally if it's not attached to something, the
> mice carry it away.
>

LOL :-D

I put them in an empty tea tin.

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

Your Name <YourName@YourISP.com> wrote:

> Does leaving my usb thumbdrive in the computer usb port decrease its life?

No.

I've been keeping the Macrium Reflect backup drive plugged in.

Longevity never occurred to me.

Jeff Barnett wrote:

> Carlos E. R. wrote:
>> Your Name wrote:

>>> Does leaving my usb thumbdrive in the computer usb port decrease its
>>> life?
>>
>> If you are not accessing it at all, and the thing is not warm, then it
>> shouldn't impact its life. But why would you have it plugged
>> permanently?
>
> Many routers allow a USB device to be plugged into them: thumbs, hard
> drives, printers, etc. These devices can be accessed by any machine on
> the LAN. A thumb drive provides an inexpensive and relatively safe way
> to share small amounts of data.

My 3D printer uses a USB flash drive for primary storage. It must be
plugged in for storing model files (transferred via Wi-Fi). Very useful,
remains plugged in. A solid-state drive should last forever anyway. The
user's need for occasional or frequent use dictates, not concern for wear
and tear on the flash drive.

On 2021-09-07 23:50:35 +0000, Carlos E. R. said:
> I put them in an empty tea tin.

I keep files on the usb drive which I access about once a day or two.
Don't feel like getting on my knees with a flashlight to pull it out.
Putting it back in under the desk is even more difficult (takes 3 tries).

Your Name wrote:
> On 2021-09-07 23:50:35 +0000, Carlos E. R. said:
>> I put them in an empty tea tin.
>
> I keep files on the usb drive which I access about once a day or two.
> Don't feel like getting on my knees with a flashlight to pull it out.
> Putting it back in under the desk is even more difficult (takes 3 tries).

I *never* put computers on the floor.

They suck up too much dust off the floor.

Since my machines are at table height, connecting
USB sticks is pretty easy.

*******

As to the nature of your question, your question
is actually a good one, without a simple answer.

I was going to answer your question in terms of
wear leveling behavior, but as it turns out, the
design of USB sticks, they're not all the same.

https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/fast10/tech/full_papers/boboila.pdf

And I know what kind of wear leveling was on my dead
TLC USB flash sticks - the wrong kind :-/ I put a persistent
Linux homedir on there, and a good wear-leveler would
prevent "a hole from being burned in the same flash blocks".
Instead, when the persistent partition was written, the
same cells got all the writes. The stick died, in no time
at all (a year of very light usage, just a handful of
active sessions).

And it's not the "brand" of stick, it's the brand of controller
inside the stick that would matter. They credit "Memorex" with
making a good thing, but really, it was just Memorex finding that
chip on the market and using it. The design happened to have
both static and dynamic wear leveling.

What I was looking for there, was whether the sticks
do anything in the background. Like "clean up" after
a large number of writes. The only way a USB stick
is going to wear by being left in a USB socket, is
if the thing is perpetually playing with its flash.
If it was moving data around as part of wear
leveling, that would be bad.

A while back, Rene bought a "USB multimeter". It's
a device with a colorful display, about the size of
your thumb or so, and it has "volts" and "amps" on
the display. The device has a male and a female USB
on it. It sits "in-line" with a peripheral. You would
plug your USB stick into the meter, then plug the
meter into the PC USB socket. The meter does not "register"
on the USB bus, and it's there just to monitor the power.

Now, if the USB stick drew a significant and varying
current, when it was supposed to be quiet, we might
suspect it is fiddling (a fancy form of wear leveling).
If the current remained really low and didn't have
glitches in the readings, then we could assume it is
asleep.

This sort of power measurement is harder on USB3 sticks,
because they remain quite warm when left plugged in
and the OS isn't running. It would be harder to use
the meter trick, to get some idea what it is doing.
I'm really surprised at some of the ones I've got
(USB3 Flash sticks), that they don't do a better
job of power saving.

It's unlikely the sticks are damaged by being left plugged
in. The USB3 ones, some of those get hot, and apparently,
the USB sticks can still tolerate that. That does not
say with a guarantee, that the life would be shortened.

And a thing that would make a difference, is if the USB
stick drew large currents because it was messing with the
flash when it was idle. Using a USB meter, you could check
for signs of that sort of thing - I don't think it does stuff
like that. The only exception might be one of the USB storage
devices which is really an SSD inside (as SSDs can rearrange
flash for hours, before they're happy with the results
and stop fiddling - it takes a long time to clean up inside
an SSD, after a random 4K write test).

Paul

On 9/7/2021 8:59 PM, John Doe wrote:
> Jeff Barnett wrote:
>
>> Carlos E. R. wrote:
>>> Your Name wrote:
>
>>>> Does leaving my usb thumbdrive in the computer usb port decrease its
>>>> life?
>>>
>>> If you are not accessing it at all, and the thing is not warm, then it
>>> shouldn't impact its life. But why would you have it plugged
>>> permanently?
>>
>> Many routers allow a USB device to be plugged into them: thumbs, hard
>> drives, printers, etc. These devices can be accessed by any machine on
>> the LAN. A thumb drive provides an inexpensive and relatively safe way
>> to share small amounts of data.
>
> My 3D printer uses a USB flash drive for primary storage. It must be
> plugged in for storing model files (transferred via Wi-Fi). Very useful,
> remains plugged in. A solid-state drive should last forever anyway. The
> user's need for occasional or frequent use dictates, not concern for wear
> and tear on the flash drive.
Not quite true. Solid state drives do wear out with use. For example,
Samsung and other vendors of SSD devices specify the number of
gigabytes, terabytes, etc. that the drive is expected to write before
failing. A good deal of the firm ware in these devices is dedicated to
evenly using the storage blocks so that you don't have a bunch of early
failures from spot overuse. The firmware 1) tries to ensure that blocks
all have approximately the same usage and 2) changes block address as
necessary. This is so that the OS can have the illusion that it is
specifying hard disk addresses when that is all managed internal to the SSD.
--
Jeff Barnett

Jeff Barnett wrote:
> On 9/7/2021 8:59 PM, John Doe wrote:
>> Jeff Barnett wrote:
>>
>>> Carlos E. R. wrote:
>>>> Your Name wrote:
>>
>>>>> Does leaving my usb thumbdrive in the computer usb port decrease its
>>>>> life?
>>>>
>>>> If you are not accessing it at all, and the thing is not warm, then it
>>>> shouldn't impact its life. But why would you have it plugged
>>>> permanently?
>>>
>>> Many routers allow a USB device to be plugged into them: thumbs, hard
>>> drives, printers, etc. These devices can be accessed by any machine on
>>> the LAN. A thumb drive provides an inexpensive and relatively safe way
>>> to share small amounts of data.
>>
>> My 3D printer uses a USB flash drive for primary storage. It must be
>> plugged in for storing model files (transferred via Wi-Fi). Very useful,
>> remains plugged in. A solid-state drive should last forever anyway. The
>> user's need for occasional or frequent use dictates, not concern for wear
>> and tear on the flash drive.
> Not quite true. Solid state drives do wear out with use. For example,
> Samsung and other vendors of SSD devices specify the number of
> gigabytes, terabytes, etc. that the drive is expected to write before
> failing. A good deal of the firm ware in these devices is dedicated to
> evenly using the storage blocks so that you don't have a bunch of early
> failures from spot overuse. The firmware 1) tries to ensure that blocks
> all have approximately the same usage and 2) changes block address as
> necessary. This is so that the OS can have the illusion that it is
> specifying hard disk addresses when that is all managed internal to the
> SSD.

Some USB sticks have static wear leveling, some have
both static and dynamic wear leveling.

Wear leveling was protected by patents, and considering
the low price of some USB sticks (and the associated
controller), it must be a hard decision whether to spend
royalty money on patents to make a better product. It
probably was not design difficulty that informed how
USB controllers got designed, but the patent landscape
instead.

All I know is, I had a couple sticks that died premature
deaths, and something wasn't right about that. If the
controllers had used "the best methods", like we see on
SSDs, that simply should not have happened, based on
my knowledge of the quantity of writes involved. An
equivalent capacity SSD would not have failed like
my TLC USB Flash sticks did.

These are "write related failures". If the OP is doing
"read mostly", and leaving the stick plugged in, it probably
is not wearing on the device.

The older papers on Flash, described a read-related wear
phenomenon. But if that exists today, it gets hardly
any press coverage at all, and is certainly not mentioned
in any warranty descriptions.

Paul

On 08/09/2021 06.35, Paul wrote:
> Your Name wrote:
>> On 2021-09-07 23:50:35 +0000, Carlos E. R. said:
>>> I put them in an empty tea tin.
>>
>> I keep files on the usb drive which I access about once a day or two.
>> Don't feel like getting on my knees with a flashlight to pull it out.
>> Putting it back in under the desk is even more difficult (takes 3 tries).
>
> I *never* put computers on the floor.
>
> They suck up too much dust off the floor.

Indeed they do.

At a place I worked at, I had to put the machines over one or two layers
of bricks, to minimize the danger. I was not allowed to put them back on
the tables.

> Since my machines are at table height, connecting
> USB sticks is pretty easy.
>
> *******
>
> As to the nature of your question, your question
> is actually a good one, without a simple answer.
>
> I was going to answer your question in terms of
> wear leveling behavior, but as it turns out, the
> design of USB sticks, they're not all the same.
>
> https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/fast10/tech/full_papers/boboila.pdf

Ah! I must read this later.

>
> And I know what kind of wear leveling was on my dead
> TLC USB flash sticks - the wrong kind :-/ I put a persistent
> Linux homedir on there, and a good wear-leveler would
> prevent "a hole from being burned in the same flash blocks".
> Instead, when the persistent partition was written, the
> same cells got all the writes. The stick died, in no time
> at all (a year of very light usage, just a handful of
> active sessions).

Right.

As I have mentioned more than once, USB are actually optimized for FAT
(or for whatever filesystem they come with from factory). And using
ext3/4 with journal is a bad idea.

>
> And it's not the "brand" of stick, it's the brand of controller
> inside the stick that would matter. They credit "Memorex" with
> making a good thing, but really, it was just Memorex finding that
> chip on the market and using it. The design happened to have
> both static and dynamic wear leveling.
>
> What I was looking for there, was whether the sticks
> do anything in the background. Like "clean up" after
> a large number of writes. The only way a USB stick
> is going to wear by being left in a USB socket, is
> if the thing is perpetually playing with its flash.
> If it was moving data around as part of wear
> leveling, that would be bad.
>
> A while back, Rene bought a "USB multimeter". It's
> a device with a colorful display, about the size of
> your thumb or so, and it has "volts" and "amps" on
> the display. The device has a male and a female USB
> on it. It sits "in-line" with a peripheral. You would
> plug your USB stick into the meter, then plug the
> meter into the PC USB socket. The meter does not "register"
> on the USB bus, and it's there just to monitor the power.

Cute.

>
> Now, if the USB stick drew a significant and varying
> current, when it was supposed to be quiet, we might
> suspect it is fiddling (a fancy form of wear leveling).
> If the current remained really low and didn't have
> glitches in the readings, then we could assume it is
> asleep.

I mentioned "getting hot"...

>
> This sort of power measurement is harder on USB3 sticks,
> because they remain quite warm when left plugged in
> and the OS isn't running. It would be harder to use
> the meter trick, to get some idea what it is doing.
> I'm really surprised at some of the ones I've got
> (USB3 Flash sticks), that they don't do a better
> job of power saving.

I only have one or two of those.

>
> It's unlikely the sticks are damaged by being left plugged
> in. The USB3 ones, some of those get hot, and apparently,
> the USB sticks can still tolerate that. That does not
> say with a guarantee, that the life would be shortened.
>
> And a thing that would make a difference, is if the USB
> stick drew large currents because it was messing with the
> flash when it was idle. Using a USB meter, you could check
> for signs of that sort of thing - I don't think it does stuff
> like that. The only exception might be one of the USB storage
> devices which is really an SSD inside (as SSDs can rearrange
> flash for hours, before they're happy with the results
> and stop fiddling - it takes a long time to clean up inside
> an SSD, after a random 4K write test).
>
>    Paul

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

On 08/09/2021 04:07, Your Name wrote:
> On 2021-09-07 23:50:35 +0000, Carlos E. R. said:
>> I put them in an empty tea tin.
>
> I keep files on the usb drive which I access about once a day or two.

How many files and how large? Are you only reading them or writing to
them as well?

Unless you're writing gigabytes of data per day to it, it should last a
long time. However, USB sticks are commodity products where there's no
guarantee of quality and can fail at any time. If these files are
important to you, you should back them up with the rest of your
important data.

> Don't feel like getting on my knees with a flashlight to pull it out.
> Putting it back in under the desk is even more difficult (takes 3 tries).

You can get extension cables or a hub to make it easier to reach.

On 08/09/2021 14.54, Chris wrote:
> On 08/09/2021 04:07, Your Name wrote:
>> On 2021-09-07 23:50:35 +0000, Carlos E. R. said:
>>> I put them in an empty tea tin.
>>
>> I keep files on the usb drive which I access about once a day or two.
>
> How many files and how large? Are you only reading them or writing to
> them as well?
>
> Unless you're writing gigabytes of data per day to it, it should last a
> long time. However, USB sticks are commodity products where there's no
> guarantee of quality and can fail at any time. If these files are
> important to you, you should back them up with the rest of your
> important data.

And not on an USB stick...

>
>> Don't feel like getting on my knees with a flashlight to pull it out.
>> Putting it back in under the desk is even more difficult (takes 3 tries).
>
> You can get extension cables or a hub to make it easier to reach.

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

On Wed, 8 Sep 2021 at 05:23:49, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote (my
responses usually follow points raised):
[snip]
>>>>> Your Name wrote:
>>>
>>>>>> Does leaving my usb thumbdrive in the computer usb port decrease its
>>>>>> life?
[snip]
>These are "write related failures". If the OP is doing
>"read mostly", and leaving the stick plugged in, it probably
>is not wearing on the device.
>
>The older papers on Flash, described a read-related wear
>phenomenon. But if that exists today, it gets hardly
>any press coverage at all, and is certainly not mentioned
>in any warranty descriptions.
>
> Paul

More or less what I was going to say: wear caused by reading is
little-publicised and probably low, so if most of the activity is
reading, I'd leave it plugged in. Because IME the connectors have a
depressingly low lifetime in terms of numbers of insertions/deletions
before they become unreliable. Not so much on the device - they're
easily enough replaced - but on the computer or whatever. (Two or three
of the three on my laptop now need careful nursing.)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Worst programme ever made? I was in hospital once having a knee operation and I
watched a whole episode of "EastEnders". Ugh! I suppose it's true to life. But
so is diarrhoea - and I don't want to see that on television. - Patrick Moore,
in Radio Times 12-18 May 2007.

On Wed, 8 Sep 2021 at 15:05:30, Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid>
wrote (my responses usually follow points raised):
>On 08/09/2021 14.54, Chris wrote:
[]
>> guarantee of quality and can fail at any time. If these files are
>> important to you, you should back them up with the rest of your
>> important data.
>
>And not on an USB stick...
[]
Yes, like the CD-RW discs of yore, I consider USB sticks as something to
be used for sneakernet purposes only (i. e. transferring files from one
computer to another). If I was in the PC service business, I might keep
utilities - and other files - on them for convenience, but not rely on
them for long-term storage.

(What _is_ good for that? Well, if it wasn't for the changes in
interface [PATA to SATA], I'd say spinning hard disc (unplugged, so not
spinning; I say that to distinguish from SSDs) - SSDs maybe, but for me
seriously long-term I'm not so sure, the technology's not been around
long enough yet. [I've never played with tape drives.] Punched tape
[plastic rather than paper] is good but rather bulky!)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Worst programme ever made? I was in hospital once having a knee operation and I
watched a whole episode of "EastEnders". Ugh! I suppose it's true to life. But
so is diarrhoea - and I don't want to see that on television. - Patrick Moore,
in Radio Times 12-18 May 2007.

On 08/09/2021 15.21, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
> On Wed, 8 Sep 2021 at 15:05:30, Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid>
> wrote (my responses usually follow points raised):
>> On 08/09/2021 14.54, Chris wrote:
> []
>>> guarantee of quality and can fail at any time. If these files are
>>> important to you, you should back them up with the rest of your
>>> important data.
>>
>> And not on an USB stick...
> []
> Yes, like the CD-RW discs of yore, I consider USB sticks as something to
> be used for sneakernet purposes only (i. e. transferring files from one
> computer to another). If I was in the PC service business, I might keep
> utilities - and other files - on them for convenience, but not rely on
> them for long-term storage.
>
> (What _is_ good for that? Well, if it wasn't for the changes in
> interface [PATA to SATA], I'd say spinning hard disc (unplugged, so not
> spinning; I say that to distinguish from SSDs) - SSDs maybe, but for me
> seriously long-term I'm not so sure, the technology's not been around
> long enough yet. [I've never played with tape drives.] Punched tape
> [plastic rather than paper] is good but rather bulky!)

Tape drives are used professionally, and they are horribly expensive.
LTO-9 takes 18TB raw.

I use external disks. Either packaged in an USB enclosure, or with an
USB external caddy, which allows switching "raw" disks easily.

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

On 2021-09-08 12:54:01 +0000, Chris said:
>> I keep files on the usb drive which I access about once a day or two.
>
> How many files and how large?

It's a typical Sandisk 128GB thumbdrive and it's almost full.

> Are you only reading them or writing to them as well?

Both. The thumbdrive contains my software and document archives.

> Unless you're writing gigabytes of data per day to it, it should last a
> long time.

Not gigabytes. From zero to kilobytes & sometimes megabytes a day.

> However, USB sticks are commodity products where there's no
> guarantee of quality and can fail at any time.

Sandisk.

> If these files are
> important to you, you should back them up with the rest of your
> important data.

They ARE the backup.
>> Don't feel like getting on my knees with a flashlight to pull it out.
>> Putting it back in under the desk is even more difficult (takes 3 tries).
>
> You can get extension cables or a hub to make it easier to reach.

As long as the thumbdrive isn't being damaged, I would just leave it in.

On 08/09/2021 14:41, Carlos E. R. wrote:
> On 08/09/2021 15.21, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
>> On Wed, 8 Sep 2021 at 15:05:30, Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid>
>> wrote (my responses usually follow points raised):
>>> On 08/09/2021 14.54, Chris wrote:
>> []
>>>> guarantee of quality and can fail at any time. If these files are
>>>> important to you, you should back them up with the rest of your
>>>> important data.
>>>
>>> And not on an USB stick...
>> []
>> Yes, like the CD-RW discs of yore, I consider USB sticks as something to
>> be used for sneakernet purposes only (i. e. transferring files from one
>> computer to another). If I was in the PC service business, I might keep
>> utilities - and other files - on them for convenience, but not rely on
>> them for long-term storage.
>>
>> (What _is_ good for that? Well, if it wasn't for the changes in
>> interface [PATA to SATA], I'd say spinning hard disc (unplugged, so not
>> spinning; I say that to distinguish from SSDs) - SSDs maybe, but for me
>> seriously long-term I'm not so sure, the technology's not been around
>> long enough yet. [I've never played with tape drives.] Punched tape
>> [plastic rather than paper] is good but rather bulky!)
>
> Tape drives are used professionally, and they are horribly expensive.
> LTO-9 takes 18TB raw.

Yup. My work uses automated tape backup for DR purposes.

> I use external disks. Either packaged in an USB enclosure, or with an
> USB external caddy, which allows switching "raw" disks easily.

I just use standard external HDDs. For really precious stuff (photos,
etc) I have a duplicate backup which is stored "off-site".

On 08/09/2021 14:53, Your Name wrote:
> On 2021-09-08 12:54:01 +0000, Chris said:
>>> I keep files on the usb drive which I access about once a day or two.
>>
>> How many files and how large?
>
> It's a typical Sandisk 128GB thumbdrive and it's almost full.

Running any kind of storage at full capacity is a bad idea. It'll affect
reliability and/or performance.

>> Are you only reading them or writing to them as well?
>
> Both. The thumbdrive contains my software and document archives.
>
>> Unless you're writing gigabytes of data per day to it, it should last
>> a long time.
>
> Not gigabytes. From zero to kilobytes & sometimes megabytes a day.
>
>> However, USB sticks are commodity products where there's no guarantee
>> of quality and can fail at any time.
>
> Sandisk.

Doesn't matter. They're all made in volume so have variable quality.

>> If these files are important to you, you should back them up with the
>> rest of your important data.
>
> They ARE the backup.

Oh. That's not the best idea.

If it is the backup, why are you reading from it?

>
>>> Don't feel like getting on my knees with a flashlight to pull it out.
>>> Putting it back in under the desk is even more difficult (takes 3
>>> tries).
>>
>> You can get extension cables or a hub to make it easier to reach.
>
> As long as the thumbdrive isn't being damaged, I would just leave it in.

On 2021-09-08 8:41 a.m., Carlos E. R. wrote:
> On 08/09/2021 15.21, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
>> On Wed, 8 Sep 2021 at 15:05:30, Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid>
>> wrote (my responses usually follow points raised):
>>> On 08/09/2021 14.54, Chris wrote:
>> []
>>>> guarantee of quality and can fail at any time. If these files are
>>>> important to you, you should back them up with the rest of your
>>>> important data.
>>>
>>> And not on an USB stick...
>> []
>> Yes, like the CD-RW discs of yore, I consider USB sticks as something to
>> be used for sneakernet purposes only (i. e. transferring files from one
>> computer to another). If I was in the PC service business, I might keep
>> utilities - and other files - on them for convenience, but not rely on
>> them for long-term storage.
>>
>> (What _is_ good for that? Well, if it wasn't for the changes in
>> interface [PATA to SATA], I'd say spinning hard disc (unplugged, so not
>> spinning; I say that to distinguish from SSDs) - SSDs maybe, but for me
>> seriously long-term I'm not so sure, the technology's not been around
>> long enough yet. [I've never played with tape drives.] Punched tape
>> [plastic rather than paper] is good but rather bulky!)
>
> Tape drives are used professionally, and they are horribly expensive.
> LTO-9 takes 18TB raw.
>
> I use external disks. Either packaged in an USB enclosure, or with an
> USB external caddy, which allows switching "raw" disks easily.
>

When I bought my first PC, Dell Dimension XPS 1000 it came with an HP
Colorado T1000 Travan tape drive, A pack of 5 400 MB tapes cost about
$175.00 cdn, terribly expensive I only ever bought 1 pacthe drive was
horribly slowe, It was tied to the secoond connector on the Floppy
cable, but back then (1995) it was pretty wonderful, and did have a very
pleasant varying pitched whine when operating. :-)

https://www.cnet.com/products/hp-colorado-t1000-tape-drive-travan-floppy-series/

Rene

On 9/7/21 7:49 PM, John Doe wrote:
> Your Name <YourName@YourISP.com> wrote:
>
>> Does leaving my usb thumbdrive in the computer usb port decrease
>> its life?
>
> No.
>
> I've been keeping the Macrium Reflect backup drive plugged in.
>
> Longevity never occurred to me.

Forty years ago, at an aviation school in Waco, TX, some A&P students
were crouched under a DC3 to work on the landing gear. It never occurred
to them that after they undid the wrong fastener, they would be crushed.

On 2021-09-08 14:16:36 +0000, Chris said:
> Running any kind of storage at full capacity is a bad idea. It'll affect
> reliability and/or performance.

It's a living archive.

It didn't start at near capacity.
That happened over time.

It was a race.
As the archives got bigger so did the USB thumbdrives to keep up with them.

> If it is the backup, why are you reading from it?

It's a living archive of software & documents.
The result of multiple machines over multiple years.

Not this latest thumbdrive but the backup itself is that result.
Over time, the thumbdrives got bigger and bigger to fit the archive.

It's cumulative.
Historical.
Meant to be useful.

It's not just a one-way backup.
It's a two-way living archive.

On Wed, 8 Sep 2021 14:21:13 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
<G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:

>On Wed, 8 Sep 2021 at 15:05:30, Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid>
>wrote (my responses usually follow points raised):
>>On 08/09/2021 14.54, Chris wrote:
>[]
>>> guarantee of quality and can fail at any time. If these files are
>>> important to you, you should back them up with the rest of your
>>> important data.
>>
>>And not on an USB stick...
>[]
>Yes, like the CD-RW discs of yore, I consider USB sticks as something to
>be used for sneakernet purposes only (i. e. transferring files from one
>computer to another). If I was in the PC service business, I might keep
>utilities - and other files - on them for convenience, but not rely on
>them for long-term storage.
>
>(What _is_ good for that?

Allegedly, this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC

https://www.mdisc.com/ though it relies on you having some sort of
optical disc writer technology attached to your box which is not
something Apple like you to have and which is something many laptop
and even desktop makers are reluctant to include.

Apple's demented drive for skinny boxes, some sort of bulimia or
anorexia in action, has meant that their kit as sold is only about 1/3
of a real PC and other manufacturers seem to be following their trend.
Temporarily, until the market leader, Apple, decides to ban them
utterly, external writers can be found. SOme will write to M-discs
though it is best to do some research before buying as some may not.

The "customers also viewed" row on this page:
https://www.amazon.com/Millenniata-Inc-M-DISC-Blu-ray-Media/dp/B00KGWV6MI
has links to some compatible drives, such as this one:
https://www.amazon.com/Pioneer-BDR-XD07S-Portable-Blu-ray-External/dp/B0843MVJ42/
but the original Mdisc.com page's linkies to "find a drive" don't work
for me.

No, I don't have shares in the companies. No, I don't get commissions
and no, I don't work there, nor anywhere. :)

And I have absolutely no idea whether they work, whether they last
longer than a carton of milk or how loud they are when writing as I've
never used one. All I really know is that since crystal memory isn't
on the horizon any time soon for some corporate profiteering type
reasons or an aspect of Physics Mdisc is probably the best we'll get
for a while.

The advertisements and promotional materials certainly look good. :)

>Well, if it wasn't for the changes in
>interface [PATA to SATA], I'd say spinning hard disc (unplugged, so not
>spinning; I say that to distinguish from SSDs) - SSDs maybe, but for me
>seriously long-term I'm not so sure, the technology's not been around
>long enough yet. [I've never played with tape drives.] Punched tape
>[plastic rather than paper] is good but rather bulky!)

HDD's are like incandescent light-bulbs. They can die the instant
they are plugged in or they can last for decades. There is no
guarantee that a costlier one is any more reliable than a cheap one
but that's the way to bet, usually though even the best of them can
die without notice.

Paper-tape is cool but readers are huge and the software driving them
is mostly extinct. NASA has a data recovery project for Apollo-era
records on magnetic tapes, paper tapes and other stuff that might be
of interest to some of us.

They stored stuff without copying it to new media when they updated
their kit. This was, in hindsight, a boo-boo of colossal proportions.

Of course, M-discs may go the way of Zip-drives. It looks like most
optical media will. Maybe.

And then we'll either lose massive chunks of digital history and all
of that pirated porn or we'll have yet another recovery effort.

Won't that be fun?

J.