How to estimate the natural age of a USB flash drive

Today, people are familiar with USB flash drives. However, there is still a lack of necessary understanding and correct concepts about its lifecycle. For example, how can we determine the age of a USB flash drive? Note: the so-called U disk is not the actual use time of the U disk, but the natural age of the U disk. What is the natural age of a USB flash drive?

In normal use, the memory in the U disk (that is, the flash chip) will gradually become aging, showing a typical descent curve (the right half of the Life Cycle curve ). The USB flash disk saves some important data. If you leave it in a proper environment and do not use it, the data will be readable after about ten years. However, if you use it frequently, and some of the memory blocks are constantly erased, the so-called "Bad Block" phenomenon will occur. At this time, the storage logic of the USB flash disk (distinguishing logical blocks from physical blocks) will automatically avoid these "Bad blocks" for storage operations (allocated to other physical blocks), just like the processing mechanism of a general hard disk. However, the overall performance of the USB flash disk memory is still decreasing, as the speed of reading data from the USB flash disk is slowing down. This reading speed slows down, and users of the USB flash drive will find it as long as they pay attention to it. At this time, U disk users should pay attention to timely backup of important data on the U disk to avoid unnecessary losses.

Generally, the read speed of the newly purchased USB flash drive is faster, for example, 5 Mb/s. However, after a period of time, the read speed is reduced to half of the original speed, for example, 2.5 Mb/s, at this time, the natural age of the U disk is about to enter "old ". If the natural "Death" of a USB flash drive is ten years old, the old USB flash drive may be seven to ten years old ~ 8 years old. However, the actual usage time of the USB flash drive may be less than 3 ~ 4 years.

The main point of this article is to show U disk users that the normal death of the u disk is a gradual process, not all sudden death. Sudden failure of a USB flash drive means that data cannot be read or written normally. How to avoid sudden death of a USB flash disk, the most important thing is to pay attention to the correct use of the USB flash disk on weekdays, especially when accessing or pulling out the USB port, do not make the brute force, resulting in voltage fluctuations, damage the "crystal oscillator" ("crystaloscillator") of the USB flash drive. To get rid of the fear of a USB flash drive, you always worry about the sudden death of your flash drive. On the eve of a USB flash drive's major failure, there must be a precursor. For example, the reading speed suddenly drops. In the near future, USB flash drives will be the companion of every one of us. We cannot understand their "preferences.

(Note: I learned about the natural age of a USB flash disk based on the Wiki definition of USB flash memory (official explanation, the speed of reading a USB flash drive is one of the elements worth your attention. A USB flash drive is life-threatening, and a USB flash drive is a friend of ours .)