I have a few questions regarding reliability of USB flash drivers. Firstly, can the drive be damaged by removing the drive from the computer without first stopping the device? Whenever I remove the drive I always use the Safely Remove Hardware feature to ‘Safely remove USB Mass Storage Device - Drive (E:)’. Once the drive has been stopped, a message appears informing ‘The ‘USB Mass Storage Device’ device can now be safely removed from the system’. The wording of the message implies that removing the drive at any other time is not safe. Sometimes I shut down Windows (or have Windows hibernating) forgetting my flash drive is still connected. Could this damage the drive? Secondly, how durable and reliable are these flash drives? They are still more expensive than hard-disk drives, but I feel inclined to think since they have no moving parts they should be less prone to failure. Is this assumption correct, and would you recommend flash drives for backups?

You should always use the Safely Remove Hardware facility when removing such devices from the computer, as opposed to simply unplugging the device. When Windows writes data to a mass storage device the data is cached before being written to the drive. If you unplug the drive before the cache has been written (or has only been partially written) there is a real risk the data on the drive will be corrupted, and the drive (or Windows) could be damaged. By using the Safely Remove Hardware facility, this ensures Windows writes and clears the cache, and then releases the hardware allowing you to safely remove the device without risk of data corruption, or damage to the USB drive or Windows itself. Many people simply unplug the USB drive from the computer, and most of the time this doesn’t result in a problem. However, at some stage their luck will run out and the drive will be removed before Windows has finished, resulting in data corruption or damage. Therefore, you should always use the Safely Remove Hardware facility, to ensure all is good. However, not removing the drive before Windows shuts down or hibernates should not present a problem. Before either of these happens Windows goes through the proper shutdown motions, including ensuring data is written to the drives correctly. So, you should be safe in these situations.

Regarding your question on USB flash drive reliability, this is a difficult question to answer. You are correct that flash drives are arguably more durable than drives with moving parts, since flash drives have a solid state design. So, they should cope better with being carried around on a regular basis. However, like all forms of storage which employ flash memory, flash drives can only sustain a finite number of write and erase cycles in their lifetime. This all depends on the quality of the drive. Mid-range drives should be able to sustain millions of these cycles, whereas lower-end drives could be more susceptible to failure. Of course, you could also be unlucky enough to end up with a faulty drive. As you can see, there are lots of factors at play. The best advice is to always purchase a reputable brand of flash drive, as these should have better quality control. With regards to backups, I use a flash drive for short-term backups (e.g. when writing an assignment, and I do a backup every day). For longer-term backups, at least at the moment, flash drives don’t have the necessary capacity I need (since I backup all my data, plus email). So, for full backups I use an external hard drive.