Here are 5 common mistakes made with computer USB flash drives

Almost everyone who has used a computer has dealt with a USB flash drive at least once in their life. It is a convenient way to move data between computers, and some even use it as an additional storage device. However, history shows that there are many myths and mistakes surrounding computer flash drives. Let's consider the five most common among them. And don't forget to subscribe to my channel and like this video.

The more memory, the more reliable the flash drive

Many users believe that flash drives of small volume are unreliable and fail faster. Yes, when the first drives appeared, such a myth took place and was not even a myth — drives with small volumes often failed.

But it has no effect on a modern USB drive – a flash drive with a volume of a couple of gigabytes and hundreds of gigabytes will work approximately the same. There is even a risk that in the process of writing to a large volume model, it may overheat and fail. And now bury all saved data.

USB flash drives are infected viruses

I still remember the times when my friends were afraid to let me connect a USB drive to their computer. And they were right – a flash drive is a stack of unknown data that can contain anything. But here it is worth understanding that any drive or object on the PC can be infected with viruses. Viruses do not directly affect the flash drive, they can infect any device. In today's reality with modern Windows, the risk of computer infection from a flash drive is many times reduced. But many people still think that it is the flash drive that is the source of computer infection.

USB flash drive does not age

This drive, on the contrary, is considered the most capricious and has a limited number of overwriting cycles. The more you record and delete, the faster the flash drive resource is exhausted. Data is written into the cells of the microcircuit as electrical charges, and cell data degrades over the number of cycles.

In addition A USB drive can fail at any moment, for example, due to overheating or exposure to static electricity. Even if your flash drive has been lying in the closet for 5 years, it is still better to buy a new one in order not to risk your data.

The USB flash drive must be safely removed

Several years ago, manufacturers of flash drives and developers of the Windows operating system recommended safely removing the flash drive. It was necessary to find the device in the taskbar and click “Eject”. Currently, this advice works only partially: if at the moment no program works with the drive, you can remove the flash drive by simply disconnecting it from the USB port. But if you disconnect the drive during recording, there is a risk of errors and irreversible data loss. Especially if you clicked on the computer “Cut” and “Paste” on a flash drive.

USB flash drive – great place for backups

Don't use a flash drive to store backups. Her device is primitive, unlike the same SSD drive, there is a risk of losing data at any moment, even on a fresh one. The flash drive can only be used as an additional backup to reduce the risk of two devices going out of service at once.

No is it worth storing data on such a drive in the long term — for this, it is better to use a classic HDD disk.