blog: the truth about USB sticks

[nikos]

here's the comment area for today's blog post found at
http://zabkat.com/blog/eject-USB-drive.htm

[Kilmatead]

Ghastly sound?  I remember the first time I visited an evil family member in university, and I strayed into the Comp Dep, and the first time I saw an 8-inch floppy (yes, the decent-sized ones that held next to no data) I thought the gentle 'hhhiiissss' it made it as spun in its sleeve was a lullaby.  Either that or it was a foreshadowing of my missed-career as a snake-charmer.  

Not ghastly at all.

And, for future reference, the traditional Christmas-New/Years lectures on BBC are usually about physics and chemistry and cool stuff like that, so you might think about raising the bar a little.  Just a little.

And in 350 words you didn't even mention stream-loss warnings?  That's like the No.1 issue for the uninitiated x2 user. Think of the missed opportunities for juvenile urination-jokes and stuff you could have availed of.

(And Achilles is still waiting for you to give him his due.  Speaking of urinating with a certain wild-abandon.  :twisted:)

[nikos]

the 5-1/4 disks had really scary sounds. You couldn't mistake one still getting written onto!

ps with so many new family members and future users I must dumb down the posts from time to time. But did you know about the difference in FAT/NTFS sticks? I bet not many people do, even if past the suckling stage

[Cosmo]

Uwe Sieber is a very competent fellow regarding USB. Some very useful tips you find here, troubleshooting here.

[Kilmatead]

Some very useful tips you find here, troubleshooting here.

You see, Nikos?  Now there's a more technical (and thus more entertaining) way to go about it, rather than just skimming over the good bits.  Only let down by some slightly dodgy English, but I never blame anyone (except English speakers) for that.

That said starting out with an unintentional laugh is always a good way to go - "An USB pen drive (also called 'flash drive', 'memory stick' or in german 'USB-Stick') is drive and media in one.".  Is "USB-Stick" translated in high-German or Low-German?

But did you know about the difference in FAT/NTFS sticks? I bet not many people do...

Umm... exactly where are all these people who don't already know such things hiding?  In case you haven't noticed, most of the people here tend to be more technical than your average housewife from the 50's - now if you were discussing the drive-handler intricacies of SSD latency pitfalls or why NAND-based tech isn't quite ready for the hot-swap market (after all, it is just "flash" memory in a push-up bra) - or debunking the popular myth that paging-files should be moved off the SSD, I'd be cheering you on.

As it is, I'm just urinating with wild abandon in sympathy with the unchosen-débutante who'll have to wait yet another Sunday for his time in the sun and high society.  (It's things like this that the psychologists use to explain why I grew up to hate my sister.  Or maybe that was just my latent misanthropy coming to the fore and she was just a convenient target?  Either way, you don't want him to grow up to be like me, do you?  Never underestimate the capacity for a young mind to embrace a seriously twisted outlook on life [and then blame/inflict it on others]. )

[FrizzleFry]

I've found that with Windows 7 and 8 you can right-click eject flash drives to safely remove them. I find this more convenient than using the Safely Remove tray icon. Normally I eject flash drives from the x2 drive bar but you can also eject them from the WE navigation pane or from Computer. Unfortunately the eject command does not appear for external hard drives so you have to remove them using the tray icon.

[CrossX]

Well, since it is something related in some way with this thread's subject, let's also have a look here
http://forum.zabkat.com/viewtopic.php?t=9828
for other details about "USB and Autoruns"
and here
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=224516
for "Perfectly Protected USB Flash Drive" playing with NTFS settings  :roll:

[Kilmatead]

Unfortunately the eject trick command does not appear for external hard drives so you have to remove them using the tray icon.

As with anything these days, there are programmes designed to replace the stock Windows versions - which, naturally, provide more options.  Utilities like this sort of thing (or I think NirSoft has one which can be command-line configured to execute via FileMenuTools context menu entries, etc) - have handy little features like auto-closing programmes currently running off the specified drive, or in the case of older OS's, closing explorer-windows which happen to be blocking the closure by simple being open browsers.

[snemarch]

I've found that with Windows 7 and 8 you can right-click eject flash drives to safely remove them. I find this more convenient than using the Safely Remove tray icon. Normally I eject flash drives from the x2 drive bar but you can also eject them from the WE navigation pane or from Computer.

Oh, thanks for that tidbit! I've been using the tray icon since forever, since in XP it didn't fully dismount the drive - it safely dismounts the volume, but doesn't go all the way and "safely removes" the entire USB device (it still has drive letter assigned in Explorer, even if it goes to "Removeable Drive (F:)" instead of the partition name, and it still shows up in the Safely Remove tray list.)

I guess it would actually be safe to remove the pendrive after that, since the partition is unmounted and thus all cache should be flushed, but I've always played it safe with USB media . Nice to see that on Win7, it even disappers from the compmgmt.mscs list, even though Explorer still shows "Removable Disk (F:)".

Caveat: what happens when explorer-ejecting one partition on a multi-partition stick? (On second though, guess that scenario won't happen - DRIVE_FIXED can't be ejected, DRIVE_REMOABLE don't support partitions. At least not through the Windows GUI...)


As for FAT vs NTFS, I stick with NTFS, except if I need to share data with people on OS X (or rather, if they need to share data with me - OS X has NTFS support, but read-only). Sure, it's slightly more wear&tear because of the NTFS log, but I doubt it's something that'll wear out your NAND cells before the drive dies for other reasons (I've never had a pendrive that felt entirely reliable - at least none that I've lugged with me for my daily commute, travels, ...).

But it's a more robust filesystem, especially if you need to lend the stick to "premature yankers". Sure, not-flushed files will have corrupt contents, but at least you don't get a majorly garbled filesystem . Can't remember when I last ran into permission problems, except when deliberately setting prohibitive permissions on items. Normally when copying files with explorer or x^2, permissions go to "Everyone = Full Control", and Everyone has the same SID, as documented in Well-known SIDs.

If you use a backup program that goes to lengths to preserve security identifiers, that's of course a different scenario, and you can very well run into permission-fun then, and darn those SIDs look ugly when you're not on the same NT Domain - but for "normal use", I wouldn't say file permissions are much of an issue?

Ah yes, and probably the most important for regular users: NTFS handles files >4gig, which I often need - I guess exFAT would be viable interchange-wise nowadays, and it also handles >4gig files... but it's still the old unreliable FAT (perhaps even a bit more, given it only has one FAT copy, and adds a free-space bitmap?), and it's an OpenSource hostile filesystem

Oh, and I do like having write caching enabled on my pendrives - even if it means you can't rely on explorer "time left" speeds, and will need to run something like SysInternals sync.exe. Some drives are painfully slow without caching, at least when you work with (write to) files on the drive instead of just copying back and forth. My guess would be the good old write- and erase-block sizes.


PS: does anybody know how many flash pendrives use write wear leveling today? That could be an argument for NTFS vs FAT as well. While the absolute amount of data written to the log shouldn't be much of a concern (only filesystem metadata, not file content, is journalled) it's located in a relatively fixed location - so drives without wear levelling might wear out quicker with NTFS than FAT.

A quick look-see around Corsair's site (including their forum) indicates that they do some sort of wear levelling, or at least have spare blocks, but nobody wants to comment on the details, but rather stick to "our drives should last the full lifetime they're rated for, if not we'll be happy to send a replacement" (5yr warranty isn't all too bad.)

Whelp, that became a bit on the long side. One last comment: USB3 is fast. Didn't think it would matter for pendrives (slow MLC NAND, limited controllers) - but boy oh boy (The 32gig Voyager GT I picked up recently comes very close to the advertised 55MB/s write, 220MB/s read).

[nikos]

does anybody know how many flash pendrives use write wear leveling today

no but with their prices being so cheap who cares? Just get a new one for daddy and a lolipop for the kids

[snemarch]

does anybody know how many flash pendrives use write wear leveling today

no but with their prices being so cheap who cares? Just get a new one for daddy and a lolipop for the kids

I'm inclined to agree with you, at least when following the general advice that "pendrives are unreliable and shouldn't be used for anything you don't have backups for" - the high-speed USB3 are a bit too expensive to be "throwaway", but still... it's amazing how prices have dropped.

I think this pretty darn fast 32gig USB3 pen I have now was slightly cheaper than my first device, which was 64 megs and felt barely faster than a floppy iirc

[pschroeter]

I remember the hard shell 1.4MB floppies my Mac Plus in the 80s used seemed so futuristic after the flat PC 5-1/4 disks with an exposed media slot where the drive read the disc, which you put in sleeves after you were done using them.
I also think I remember before I got my first hard drive (20 MB which cost me $700) that one 1.4 MB floppy was used to boot the operating system and another held the program and documents you saved that were created with it.

I miss the early days of person computers, when anything they did seemed like magic. These days you could tell me they had a program that read minds and I would ask how much hard disk space does it use .

[ZoNi]

When talking about USB, here is probably THE best protection for those drives: MCShield.

http://amf.mycity.rs/mcshield/

It is freeware, it can work very nice along with any antivirus...

Highly recommended!