I see flash drives being offered for sale on the Bay with advertised capacities of "1TB". Sounds tempting, until you read the small print (if present) and note that the actual capacity is 128GB. So presumably the capacity should really be written as "1Tb". This nonsense seems fairly recent but is going to catch gullible or non-observant purchasers.

 

advertised capacities of "1TB". Sounds tempting

Not to be confused with a criticism of your interest in such a beast but it so reminds me of the increasing anxiety I experienced as USB thumb drives increased in capacity and dropped in cost.

It sounds good, unless you are herding cats… err... supporting faculty, who, while quite brilliant and unfailingly competent in the various fields of engineering and science were not well informed about the information technology they depended on and that I had to ensure “worked”.

”Putting all your eggs in one basket” is a very inadequate sentiment when you imagine gigabytes of research data, the only copy, in the equivalent of a gigantic plastic grocery bag which they perceived as a strong box.

I had to to hardware repairs on such drives on more than one occasion. The idea of a TB of data on one, non-redundant, highly mobile and vulnerable device is the stuff to lose sleep over.

 

Not to be confused with a criticism of your interest in such a beast but it so reminds me of the increasing anxiety I experienced as USB thumb drives increased in capacity and dropped in cost.

It sounds good, unless you are herding cats… err... supporting faculty, who, while quite brilliant and unfailingly competent in the various fields of engineering and science were not well informed about the information technology they depended on and that I had to ensure “worked”.

”Putting all your eggs in one basket” is a very inadequate sentiment when you imagine gigabytes of research data, the only copy, in the equivalent of a gigantic plastic grocery bag which they perceived as a strong box.

I had to to hardware repairs on such drives on more than one occasion. The idea of a TB of data on one, non-redundant, highly mobile and vulnerable device is the stuff to lose sleep over.

Wasn´t organized redundant back up conceived to minimize if not avoid completely that? (At a certain point in time maybe depending of a lazy human component).

Did mine yesterday.

 

Wasn´t organized redundant back up conceived to minimize if not avoid completely that? (At a certain point in time maybe depending of a lazy human component).

Did mine yesterday.

Of course redundancy and geographic diversity are the key to data protection but getting people to do even one backup can be very hard. It’s even harder then the storage device has no fixed home, they just don’t bother with it—until disaster trikes, then they get very religious about it.

 

Of course redundancy and geographic diversity are the key to data protection but getting people to do even one backup can be very hard. It’s even harder then the storage device has no fixed home, they just don’t bother with it—until disaster trikes, then they get very religious about it.

Yes, they get very religious about it, using words like "Holy S&!^". At least try to make them use a slc nand usb flash drive instead of cheap fake 1TB flash drives found online.
https://www.delkin.com/blog/getting-to-know-the-slc-nand-usb-flash-drive/

 

All my computers are on automatic backup. And not on thumb drives either.

I keep a lot of music on a thumb drive so it can be played in the car. One in the wife's car too. I had one fail on me. Fortunately it wasn't a loss of anything other than dollars. No religion here - just good sense.

 

I see flash drives being offered for sale on the Bay with advertised capacities of "1TB". Sounds tempting, until you read the small print (if present) and note that the actual capacity is 128GB. So presumably the capacity should really be written as "1Tb". This nonsense seems fairly recent but is going to catch gullible or non-observant purchasers.

Some claim to actually be the stated capacity. If it seems too good to be true, it's probably a fake.

I've been having problems with 128GB microSD cards. My Wife bought 3 from Amazon (claimed to be Samsung Store) and all 3 failed testing by h2testw. I bought 3 SanDisk from Best Buy and had to return one that failed at around the 40GB mark.

H2testw takes 4 hours to test a 128GB card. Fortunately, testing to the 40GB fail point only took half an hour, but I ran the test several times.

I noted recently that SD cards have a limited lifetime warranty (at least PNY and SanDisk). The catch is that you have to return the card, original packaging, and proof of purchase. One of those companies requires an RMA. I'll probably keep feeding my RPi's on my dime...

 

Had one microSD fail. Was in my dash camera. Didn't discover the failure until I needed it. Fortunately Walmart cameras caught the whole thing. Otherwise I could have been deep in it.

 

FWIW: industrial SD cards are often a better fit for RPi storage, security/dash cameras, and other write-heavy applications. Cumulative bytes written is what kills consumer-focused cards in these uses. Industrial SD cards are very expensive (e.g. Micron's 128GB MTSD128AKC7MS-1WT sells for $70 CAD) but they are designed to cope with hundreds of TB written before failure.