Data Loss Disasters – Fake Flash Drives
December 17, 2008 by Mike White · View Comments
Flash memory storage media has become the most popular form of portable storage in the world today notably because of the ease of use and flexibility of USB devices and helped along by both the reliability of USB flash memory and of course the ever increasing amount of data that these devices can now hold, which is a plus point for many users.
This doesn’t explain the huge number of failures noted in recent months, in fact the whole of the data recovery industry seem to be focusing a lot of attention in the USB Memory Stick Recovery sector, but why should good old trustworthy Flash Memory require such devoted attention?
USB storage devices are also dropping in cost all of the time. They are growing in popularity at such a rate that the number of devices shipped in 2007 was double that shipped in 2006. By the end of 2008, annual sales are estimated to be in the region of 300 million shipped units.
With such large numbers of devices actually being shipped and purchased by 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.
electric apricot divx 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.
Part of the problem lies with the consumer to some extent as the demand for ever cheaper products leads to the need for lean and more efficient or cheaper manufacturing requirements. A lot of failed devices are said to originate in the far east and are marketed as generic memory devices. In addition, there is also a large increase in the number of fake devices in the market place.
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 beginning. 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!
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 the risk of saving a relatively small amount of money?
Mike White is a technology enthusiast with a keen interest in business computing, Data Recovery, Raid Data Recovery consumer electronics and design and technology news and events.
