Are USB flash drives safe for permanent storage?

If you don't have too many big files, is it enough to save all your files on USB flash drives, instead of an external hdd or a cd? Could data be lost on USB drive?

 

They are safe, but how much storage do you need? If you have more than 16gigs you would be better off buying an external drive.

 

Vaw, archiving can be a tricky business. All media has the potential to have corrupt data. If I have something that I want to ensure it is kept I first try to print a hard copy, next I utilize CD/DVD media, an external drive, and a flash drive. In backup, the name of the game is redundancy in my opinion. When multiple copies are kept and maintained, then you have a good backup system going.

 

Thank you very much for the advice. I don't need more than 16gb now yet, maybe in future...

 

Nothing is 100%. Flash memory has the advantage over regular spinning external hard drives because regular hard drives have all those moving parts. That means more things can fail. I believe flash HDs have a longer "life expectancy" than regular HDs. But then, you carry you USB all over the place, it can get wet or dropped in a sewer or eaten by a dog or just lost cause its so small. Like most people will tell you, the more copies the better. (Unless your backing up records of your tax evasion; then keep no copies)

 

I think your best bet is to buy special optical disks (cd/dvd) that are specially made to be of archival quality. They sell some that are rated at 100 years or more. They cost a lot more than your standard disk, but they might be worth it. I think a usb flash drive would be one of the worse choices for archival personally.

example: http://www.amazon.com/MAM-Mitsui-Gold-Archive-DVD-R/dp/B000FAJQHS

 

I would not rely on any one location for forever storage. Keep it in more than one location. I used to do support for SanDisk and flashdrives do fail. Not only that but the data on there can be corrupted by an improper removal and other things. I delt with countless customers who were using the flashdrives to back up important documents and did not have extra copies. Those calls were some of the worst. Then the drive has to be formatted to work properly again. Data retrieval costs insane amounts. Memory cards have always come off as the worst since then however.

 

its pretty safe, but I did have one break on me and it had many photo's that I had not backed up anywhere else so I lost them. so general rule still applies if the data is important make sure you have a backup!

 

And old OSes can break flashdrives too... I broke one with ME... I took it apart afterwards... a tank could have driven over it...I could have chucked it out of a high rise building - it would have survived...
It was filled with a polymer.

But used on Windows ME wrongly and it broke...ah well... that never happened again and I've never used ME again since... I was trying to get an old laptop of ours back to life.

So... one error can break flashdrives quite easily.

 

if you really want to have the best archival life for storage there is one solution that has been around for decades... and is still the main backups for businesses and corporations.

I have even built many servers this this awesome technology....

TAPE DRIVES

Tape storage is reliable, durable and has long archival life... as well having the ability to even recover data if the tape is damaged or even burned.

I know of no big business that does not back up their stuff on tape.

Flash memory is a good and inexpensive alternative.
CD/DVD's... do not expect them to last.... the dye is organic and will literally wither away like a leaf.
Harddrives.... are good, but like a car's engine.... can seize up like a rock after years of no activity.

but in the end, tape is the best bet for best archival use.... even though it may be a bit slow.

 

Flash Memory is more durable than Hard Disk, and its also solid state unlike the Hard Disk's moving platters and stuff inside. But, usually, they're small and are easily lost if not taken care properly, but due to its miniature size is very portable

Hard Disk on the other hand has more gigs for higher capacities (like 80GB) at a cheaper ratio than Flash, but is more prone to failures than Flash. But hard disks are bigger, which is less portability but you won't lose it as easy as a flash drive.

 

the data is safe in the flash drive .

the storage capacity depends upon the size of the flash drive.

if you want to store more data , you can use the external hard drive.

 

Nooooooo......... Tapes are awful.

Just wait 5 years. Opps your tape drive won't read your tapes? Your tapes are an older format that newer drives won't read? Awl. So sorry.

My opinion is based on the company I work for which deals exclusively with tape drive backups. We use HP tape drives and media. They're unreliable and expensive. We're attempting to go USB hard drives in the next few years.

 

Online storage could be an option.

 

that could be true, but if you keep the same tape drive, the tapes will read.

I have mainly worked with Seagate and Quantum tape drives, which seemed perfectly fine.

 

For work we use tape here and used DVD at my last place. I much preferred the dvd method. For how long we need data it was more than adiquite but it had the huge advantage of no wait times. I hate that awful downtime of waiting for a tape to rewind, and the drives do get dirty and tapes wear out and are expensive to replace.

 

the small data is safe in the usb devices. you can safe the data for a very long time but use the usb drive safely.

you can also use the external hard drive to save the data for a very long time.

how much data would you want to save it?