Are flash drives reliable for storing photos and documents?

The worst thing about flash drives in my experience is the construction of the case and connector.

They are just glued together. The casing can just come apart in your hands. Leaving aside the memory cells inside, they are just too flimsy to be taken very seriously---but I do use them casually.

Alphaniner--thanks for the link to that Windows checksumming tool. I'm going to have to get serious with that. Checksummer's latest version is 10 years old yesterday---do you know if it is fully compatible with 64-bit Win 7, 8, and 10?

I've got close to 100,000 data files of one type or another. I'd guess 90% of them have not been accessed in several years other than to copy. The text files haven't been read by my own eyes, most of the pictures haven't been looked at, and probably 3/4 of the mp3s haven't been played.

If 1/10 of 1% of them are in fact bad (unopenable, distorted, corrupted, unplayable), that's 100 bad files.

When I do a "backup", I'd just be backing up 100 bad files from point A to point B---without knowing those 100 files were totally useless.

Is there any way out of that dilemma? I'd guess not, if you don't have known good copies to compare to. And who can say they have personally actually opened and looked at or heard all of their tens of thousands of data files since they were first made over the last 20 plus years?

I've lost data on flash drives a few times in the past. Mostly due to being unable to safely eject due to something locking files on the flash drive like a buggy shell extension.

See:

How to Use Safely Remove Hardware to Eject a Device in Windows 7 and Windows 8

Any time you have a problem with "Safely Remove Hardware" option to eject a flash drive - the way to remove it without loosing / corrupting data is to switch off the computer before removing the drive.

ignatzatsonic said:

Alphaniner--thanks for the link to that Windows checksumming tool. I'm going to have to get serious with that. Checksummer's latest version is 10 years old yesterday---do you know if it is fully compatible with 64-bit Win 7, 8, and 10?

You might be interested in DataHealthCheck:

DataHealthCheck Download

The first time a folder is scanned it adds all files MD5 and last modification date to a database. For subsequent runs it will rescan the folder and build a list of all the files and if a file previously existed it will compare the current "hash/modification date" with the old "hash/modification date" from the database to determine if the file is unchanged/changed/corrupt. If the file is changed it will add the new MD5 hash to the database and if new files are found their hashes will be added to the database.

So basically you have to scan your files at least once before subsequent scans at a later time will show problems.

For .jpg files I use a certain utility:

For corrupt video file detection take a look at the thread here:

Where are the Most Recently Used Lists?

Quote from Post #30 in the above thread:

But I tried out Media Preview anyway. And guess what? Besides seemingly working good, it allows Explorer to show thumbnails for .flv files. And I quickly discovered that it doesn't build a thumbnail for a corrupt file! It turns out I had a lot of corrupt .flv files!

And it was a breeze deleting them all, too. I just set Explorer to show medium icons and deleted all that didn't have a preview thumbnail. Boom, done! So it turns out to also be a good tool for finding corrupt files, too.

So if you try it - set Explorer to show video thumbnails and only check those videos where no thumbnail i displayed. It saves having to play them all to test for corruption.

Callender said:

Any time you have a problem with "Safely Remove Hardware" option to eject a flash drive - the way to remove it without loosing / corrupting data is to switch off the computer before removing the drive.

In win-7 shut down is easy
In win-8 and 10 not so much seeing fast start does not shut down the system it only hibernates
I've only had the issue in 8 and 10 with errors reconnecting flash drives or even exterior hard drives becoming or being seen as Raw or getting the well known Must initialize disk before you can use it :)
Fast Startup - Turn On or Off in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums

ignatzatsonic said:

The worst thing about flash drives in my experience is the construction of the case and connector.

That became my main concern. Also just spending money does not always guarantee reliability. My first flash drive was a Sandisk Titanium. All great revues but it turned out the "sliding guts" was not very solid. It died after about a dozen insertions. Fortunately I got a warning with intermittent contact and got my data off.

My preferred drive now as a price/performance/ruggedness standby is AData s102 USB 3.0. The body is corrugated aluminum and the connection seems solid with no moving parts. I bought some AData and Kingston "cheapies" just for copying files on to plug into another machine(a PC on a wired network for cheaper printing as example) but generally my warning would be avoid moving parts. Especially the "sliding guts" design. My first s102 I kept in my pocket and it had to absorb my weight on the body. The little cap on the back end falls off since I am too lazy to super glue it. But it still works fine. Of course I haven't tried dozens of brands because I try to avoid throwing money away. But I do like the s102. It comes in capacities 16GB all the way up to 256GB.

I have 2 all-metal flash drives which live on my key-ring. The 32 gb Sandisk Cruzer Force is my everyday workhorse, containing my most used tools and utilities for working on client machines. Over the 3 or 4 years I've had it, it has survived multiple reformats, hundreds of improper disconnects and thousands of read/write cycles. It has been absolutely bullet proof. I just bought the 32 gb Samsung USB3, so it hasn't seen much use yet.

One cautionary tale. I had a client who was using a flash drive (Lexar, iirc) for backup and left it plugged in at all times. It died. For so many reasons, remove/disconnect whatever your backup media is when not in use.

Yes I've never had a problem with flash drives loaded with repair tools. Only problems with corrupted personal files.