Pen Drive storage devices have proved themselves to be a very practical and robust mobile storage method, far surpassing anything that has gone before. For the most part these devices are very reliable as they rely on solid state technology and therefore have no moving parts, which is a big bonus.
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 the higher number of units in the market place it goes without saying that that the actual physical numbers of failures of portable storage devices will increase, double the units = double the failures. However along side the number of failing units of more concern is the increase in the ratio of failed units that is being seen.
So why is it that a storage media famed for its reliability fail in such high numbers? Well in about 98% of cases it is not the Flash memory that fails, in fact, following a failure it is not uncommon that the NAND memory chip within the USB device is found to be in perfect working order.
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:
These fake devices often take advantage of the consumer by reporting much higher storage capacity than is actually available which is very misleading right from the off. Another problem here as well is the cost , yes they are cheaper but what are you actually getting for your money? The manufacturing process can only go so far and that only leaves one option, cheaper and substandard components!
In order to avoid this problem I recommend only purchasing brand named devices from reputable suppliers. Remember, as with anything, if the price or claims seem too good to be true, they normally are.
You can find more great advice on pen drive recovery here or for general computing advice visit the computer data recovery and repair website.