Vista - Readyboost - Good At Destroying USB Drives?

Hi,

I installed Vista on Thursday last week (same day I received my express
upgrade from XP MCE), and after it confirming that it was all working
inserted a brand new 2 GB USB Stick to use as the Readyboost feature. The
USB Stick was a Buffalo FireStix (which I'd chosen specifically for this
given its very fast read/write speeds).

Yesterday, it stopped working - and the USB shows 0 Bytes used out of a
capacity of 0 on every PC I've tried it on, won't format etc. - and so has
turned into a paper weight in three days. Could be a manufacturing fault of
course, but I'm wondering if the constant access cycles caused by Readyboost
(I'm currently using an old Verbatim stick, and the access light flashes a
very high percentage of the time) are enough to stress a disk beyond its
design limits.

Would welcome anyone else's experience - is my experience of Readyboost
going to be typical.

Bob,

On 4/2/2007 11:46 AM On a whim, Bob Huntley pounded out on the keyboard

> Hi,
>
> I installed Vista on Thursday last week (same day I received my express
> upgrade from XP MCE), and after it confirming that it was all working
> inserted a brand new 2 GB USB Stick to use as the Readyboost feature. The
> USB Stick was a Buffalo FireStix (which I'd chosen specifically for this
> given its very fast read/write speeds).
>
> Yesterday, it stopped working - and the USB shows 0 Bytes used out of a
> capacity of 0 on every PC I've tried it on, won't format etc. - and so has
> turned into a paper weight in three days. Could be a manufacturing fault of
> course, but I'm wondering if the constant access cycles caused by Readyboost
> (I'm currently using an old Verbatim stick, and the access light flashes a
> very high percentage of the time) are enough to stress a disk beyond its
> design limits.
>
> Would welcome anyone else's experience - is my experience of Readyboost
> going to be typical.
>
> Bob,
>

Hi Bob,

That's an interesting point to bring up. Sisoft Sandra has a File
System check that will test your drive compared to other devices. It
includes a "Endurance Factor" test which is described as:

"Endurance Factor: is a figure representing the Wear and Life Expectancy
of flash devices; this is obtained by dividing the average performance
(normal condition, i.e. sequential write) to the lowest performance
(high-stress condition, i.e. same block re-write). It measures the
relative improvement of endurance caused by the wear leveling or flash
management algorithm; the absolute endurance of a device (i.e. its
expected life-time) is directly dependent, in addition to this Endurance
Factor, on the nominal manufacturer rating of maximum erase/reprogram
cycles, which is typically 100,000+ for SLC and 10,000+ for MLC devices.
(Higher is better, i.e. longer life-time for the device)"

Only time will tell whether this will be an actual concern or not I guess.

--
Terry

***Reply Note***
Anti-spam measures are included in my email address.
Delete NOSPAM from the email address after clicking Reply.

I have been using the same SanDisk Micro USB thumb drive for about 4 months
now. So far so good.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban MVP
Microsoft Windows Shell/User


"Bob Huntley" <bob.huntley.REMOVE_THISD@btinternet.com> wrote in message
news7mdnX7u5vAJ0ozbnZ2dnUVZ8tKsnZ2d@bt.com...
> Hi,
>
> I installed Vista on Thursday last week (same day I received my express
> upgrade from XP MCE), and after it confirming that it was all working
> inserted a brand new 2 GB USB Stick to use as the Readyboost feature. The
> USB Stick was a Buffalo FireStix (which I'd chosen specifically for this
> given its very fast read/write speeds).
>
> Yesterday, it stopped working - and the USB shows 0 Bytes used out of a
> capacity of 0 on every PC I've tried it on, won't format etc. - and so has
> turned into a paper weight in three days. Could be a manufacturing fault
> of course, but I'm wondering if the constant access cycles caused by
> Readyboost (I'm currently using an old Verbatim stick, and the access
> light flashes a very high percentage of the time) are enough to stress a
> disk beyond its design limits.
>
> Would welcome anyone else's experience - is my experience of Readyboost
> going to be typical.
>
> Bob,
>

I think you have a fluke device. I have an OCZ Rally 2, that I 've copied
4GB of data back and forth numerous times and it's still trucking. Depending
in the Manufacture, they average life is around 100,000 write\erases (some
claim 1,000,000). A Microsoft article I read on this said they try to make
it so you wouldn't wear out the drive any faster than normal use (whatever
that means). I'd expect a flash drive to last at least 1 year, so claim with
average use, they should last "up to" 10

Unless you're you only have like 512MB of ram, You're probably not writing
that much to the device are you ?


"Bob Huntley" <bob.huntley.REMOVE_THISD@btinternet.com> wrote in message
news7mdnX7u5vAJ0ozbnZ2dnUVZ8tKsnZ2d@bt.com...
> Hi,
>
> I installed Vista on Thursday last week (same day I received my express
> upgrade from XP MCE), and after it confirming that it was all working
> inserted a brand new 2 GB USB Stick to use as the Readyboost feature. The
> USB Stick was a Buffalo FireStix (which I'd chosen specifically for this
> given its very fast read/write speeds).
>
> Yesterday, it stopped working - and the USB shows 0 Bytes used out of a
> capacity of 0 on every PC I've tried it on, won't format etc. - and so has
> turned into a paper weight in three days. Could be a manufacturing fault
> of course, but I'm wondering if the constant access cycles caused by
> Readyboost (I'm currently using an old Verbatim stick, and the access
> light flashes a very high percentage of the time) are enough to stress a
> disk beyond its design limits.
>
> Would welcome anyone else's experience - is my experience of Readyboost
> going to be typical.
>
> Bob,
>

I've been using a Kingston 1gig for about a month. Thing never seems to be
idle; its activity indicator is flashing constantly.

Maybe your drive was just the inevitable dud that comes along once in a
while.


Regards,


"Bob Huntley" <bob.huntley.REMOVE_THISD@btinternet.com> wrote in message
news7mdnX7u5vAJ0ozbnZ2dnUVZ8tKsnZ2d@bt.com...
> Hi,
>
> I installed Vista on Thursday last week (same day I received my express
> upgrade from XP MCE), and after it confirming that it was all working
> inserted a brand new 2 GB USB Stick to use as the Readyboost feature. The
> USB Stick was a Buffalo FireStix (which I'd chosen specifically for this
> given its very fast read/write speeds).
>
> Yesterday, it stopped working - and the USB shows 0 Bytes used out of a
> capacity of 0 on every PC I've tried it on, won't format etc. - and so has
> turned into a paper weight in three days. Could be a manufacturing fault
> of course, but I'm wondering if the constant access cycles caused by
> Readyboost (I'm currently using an old Verbatim stick, and the access
> light flashes a very high percentage of the time) are enough to stress a
> disk beyond its design limits.
>
> Would welcome anyone else's experience - is my experience of Readyboost
> going to be typical.
>
> Bob,
>

I've been using a Kingston 1GB DataTraveler for about 6 months with
ReadyBoost and so far it's holding up OK.

On Mon, 2 Apr 2007 19:46:44 +0100, "Bob Huntley"
<bob.huntley.REMOVE_THISD@btinternet.com> wrote:

>Hi,
>
>I installed Vista on Thursday last week (same day I received my express
>upgrade from XP MCE), and after it confirming that it was all working
>inserted a brand new 2 GB USB Stick to use as the Readyboost feature. The
>USB Stick was a Buffalo FireStix (which I'd chosen specifically for this
>given its very fast read/write speeds).
>
>Yesterday, it stopped working - and the USB shows 0 Bytes used out of a
>capacity of 0 on every PC I've tried it on, won't format etc. - and so has
>turned into a paper weight in three days. Could be a manufacturing fault of
>course, but I'm wondering if the constant access cycles caused by Readyboost
>(I'm currently using an old Verbatim stick, and the access light flashes a
>very high percentage of the time) are enough to stress a disk beyond its
>design limits.
>
>Would welcome anyone else's experience - is my experience of Readyboost
>going to be typical.
>
>Bob,

Mines OK been using it for months, no idea what it is beyond I got it
free and its a Blue 2Gb USB Stick.

Jonah

"Bob Huntley" <bob.huntley.REMOVE_THISD@btinternet.com> wrote in message
news7mdnX7u5vAJ0ozbnZ2dnUVZ8tKsnZ2d@bt.com...
> Hi,
>
> I installed Vista on Thursday last week (same day I received my express
> upgrade from XP MCE), and after it confirming that it was all working
> inserted a brand new 2 GB USB Stick to use as the Readyboost feature. The
> USB Stick was a Buffalo FireStix (which I'd chosen specifically for this
> given its very fast read/write speeds).
>
> Yesterday, it stopped working - and the USB shows 0 Bytes used out of a
> capacity of 0 on every PC I've tried it on, won't format etc. - and so has
> turned into a paper weight in three days. Could be a manufacturing fault
> of course, but I'm wondering if the constant access cycles caused by
> Readyboost (I'm currently using an old Verbatim stick, and the access
> light flashes a very high percentage of the time) are enough to stress a
> disk beyond its design limits.
>
> Would welcome anyone else's experience - is my experience of Readyboost
> going to be typical.
>
> Bob,
>


Bob,

Check out this page:
http://blogs.msdn.com/tomarcher/arch...02/615199.aspx

Has a lot of good info on ReadyBoost, straight from the horse's mouth, so to
speak.

Lang