Usb Memory Sticks – Don’t Buy A Fake
USB Flash Memory storage devices are a practical and highly portable method of storing and moving data between places. Flash Memory is highly practical for this task as it has no moving parts, supports fairly large storage and if used properly has very little chance of failing in any serious manner.
Recently though the reliability of these devices has come under a lot of scrutiny as the failure rate of what is normally very reliable technology has escalated to previously unseen levels. Data recovery companies around the world are fielding increasing number s of enquiries and have geared their operations to cope. So what is the problem here?
USB memory sticks are dropping in price all the time as with any technology as it ages and gains mass market adoption, and year on year growth in shipment of these devices has a run rate of around 100% meaning by the end of this year unit sales are expected to be in the region of a staggering 300 million.
With such large numbers of devices actually being shipped and purchased by the consumers and increase in the number of failures is in reality inevitable, however the actual level of failure is a cause of concern and is reported to be running far higher than is acceptable.
When a previously very reliable product starts to have increased failure rate, just as in any industry the repairers (in this case the data recovery companies) start to ask why and often collaborate on their findings. Investigations have started to reveal that the actual memory chips in the drives have not failed at all and are working just as expected.
The failures are normally attributed to poor manufacture quality by mushroom companies in Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and China. These devices often make their way on to the market as unbranded devices, however there are huge problems with fake devices as noted by a leading and respected UK Based Data recovery company in this article:
Such devices often misidentify the actual size of the Memory Storage that they provide, they use poor quality components including cheap crystals and microcontrollers. Whilst they work fine for a short period, when they fail or the available storage room is filled, problems almost always occur, these problems often feature data loss or corruption.
The best advice that anyone can give you here is to buy branded devices if the cost is affordable (which it generally is). And also ask your self this question, is the risk of losing all my data really worth risk of saving a relatively small amount of money?
You can find more great advice on data recovery here or for general computing and IT Support advice visit the technology support website.