View original (French)

Work directly on USB drive?

chef -  
 chef -
Hello,
I need to work on several different machines for my thesis: my desktop at work, my laptop at home.
I have a lot of data to transfer: 5GB.
Given the size of USB drives, I just bought an 8GB drive.
And I decided to work directly on it to avoid having multiple identical sources and risking deleting the most recent version...
Regarding data security: I created a Windows folder on my USB drive on my personal laptop and my work PC. As soon as I connect to these machines, I update my folders, which gives me two distinct backups (which are themselves saved on a remote server every night).
In terms of security principle, it seems fine.
My only question is: is it okay to work 16 hours a day on a USB drive?
I've had it for 15 days, and it crashed badly this morning, which scared me a bit; I almost lost 3 hours of work...
So is it a problem with my drive, or is it discouraged to work directly and for long periods on a USB drive?

Thank you.

Julien

Configuration: Windows XP / Internet Explorer 8.0

2 answers

Answer 1 / 2
Anonymous user
 
Hi, USB drives (like SD cards, etc.) wear out much faster if we write to them repeatedly. Reading doesn't pose any particular problems. There's a limited number of rewrite cycles.

An external hard drive is safer for work, I believe.
0
Answer 2 / 2
chef
 
Thank you Rocky, you confirm my hunch
Julien
0