Does pendrive becomes slow if it is formatted regularly?
By shnsun
@shnsun (196)
July 4, 2009 7:19am CST
Hello mylotters, How regularly do u format your pendrive?does pendrive becomes slow if it is formatted regularly? I used to format pendrive a lot before and found my pendrive has become slower than before. One of my bro told me his pendrive due to lot of fomatting.
(hoping for lots of response)
7 responses
@prajnith (941)
• India
4 Jul 09
ya formatting is not good.. pen drive(Flash Memory) has limited write(~1 million) after that it looses its ability to store data.. flash memory has internal circuitry that ensures that same black is not write all the times , so if you format which is nothing but writing zero's into whole of the flash memory even the one's that dint have any data and thus will decrease its life and also reduce the write and read speed as internal circuitry will take time to check which block is not written many times...
Hope this was helpfull..
1 person likes this
@eezaortile (55)
• Philippines
4 Jul 09
wow prajnith I didn't know that! Thank you for that information it really was helpful. I'm planning to use my flash/pen drive as extra RAM for my laptop. :)
@kumarpslv (3216)
• India
5 Jul 09
I don't understand the term speed of the pen drives here.It don't have any processor to process our data. If you mean storing the data and retrieving them, then these depends on our computers where we are using our pen drives.I don't think the formatting will cause any damage to the pen drive or slowdown of pen drives. All the memory devices are having its own life.Even if you don't format them, we can not use them for a long.But improper removal from the computer is causing the data loss only .Some time, if we switch on the computers,with the pen drives inserted already, is damaging the pen drives entirely as the sudden excessive voltage affect pend drives, while switch on the computers.
@prajnith (941)
• India
5 Jul 09
the term speed here is used to describe how fast data is written to pen drive and how easily the stored data can be retrieved , measured in xbits/seconds.where x may be in kilo or mega or even giga bits..
and maximum time data can be retained by pen drive is 10 years , after which all the charges stored in floating gate of mosfet is discharged and data is lost but flash memory wont get damaged, it has to be rewritten again.. but these floating gates have limit on number of times electrons can be placed in it and removed.. so formatting is setting whole of flash memory blocks to zero, even if it already had zero, so thereby we are doing unnecessary write.. and write cycle of avg pendrive(Flash memory) is 1 Million writes..
and ya removing pendrive improperly while its plugged-in may damage its cmos chip .
while removing ,even if one lead of pen drive is in contact and other 3 are not then this induces a spike thereby spoiling cmos chip.. but i dont think pen drive would get spoiled if its inserted while switching on the pc as USB ports have 5Volt regulators which wont exceed 5v unless the port itself is toasted..
@radhanair1001 (519)
• India
5 Jul 09
great description...!!
thats good to see such detailed info from you..
so...[b]Keep lotting....keep earning....
byee....[/b]
byee....[/b] @EliteUser (3964)
• Australia
7 Jul 09
Hey,
Well I don't really know for sure but I think it does, I have no idea. Hopefully someone below me can answer your question much better than I have in a more informative way. Anywayz I wish you well, have a great day MyLotting!!
@gadget_lover (132)
• India
4 Jul 09
I have been using my pendrive for 2 years. I formatted only 2-3 times. I think this may be the reason that I did not observe any change in copying speeds.
After reading the responses, I came to know that it will be damaged if you format it many times.
I also like to know what is the maximum number of formats we can do without causing damage to the pendrive.
@shnsun (196)
•
5 Jul 09
Happy to know that this discussion was informative to you too....
After knowing formatting damages the pendrive, i suggest you never format you pendrive unless it is really important.Like when you have got virus that can't be removed. I think the every format damages pendrive by a bit.
Lets hear other's comment on this...
Thanks for responding!!!
@harpreet89 (723)
• India
4 Jul 09
yep thats true..
Regularly formatting pendrive can damage your pendrive. If you format it regularly its internal chips get damaged and it response time usualy increases due to which generally become slow and often corrupt the data contained in it..
So dont regularly format your pendrive.Formatting pendrive once a month is OK.
And you said your pendrive has become slower than before!!!!
If its still in warranty (or is about to expire) try formatting your pendrive as many times as you can. By doing this ur pendrive would get damaged and you will get it replaced with a NEW ONE. :-)
Tried with mine and got a new one!!!!!
@shnsun (196)
•
4 Jul 09
There's no way i am going to formant now.Not even once. anyway its been long since i haven't format my new pendrive.
I should have done like you with my older one but now its already lost. And i learned new way to cheat the shopkeeper too. hehehe lol
Thanks for response and happy mylotting!!
@Anandhh (389)
• India
5 Jul 09
No dude we cant say that formatting a pendrive makes pendrive slow...minimum life of pendrive is 5 to 6 years and we can format a pendrive more number of times as u wish.u must take care of ur pen drive without making it to affect by virus...ur pen drive and ur pc ll be slow if ur pen drive is prone to trojan or virus..so scan ur pen drive regular using antivirus program and format it once in a month...
@kumarpslv (3216)
• India
5 Jul 09
I don't understand the term speed of the pen drives here.It don't have any processor to process our data. If you mean storing the data and retrieving them, then these depends on our computers where we are using our pen drives.I don't think the formatting will cause any damage to the pen drive or slowdown of pen drives. All the memory devices are having its own life.Even if you don't format them, we can not use them for a long.But improper removal from the computer is causing the data loss only .Some time, if we switch on the computers,with the pen drives inserted already, is damaging the pen drives entirely as the sudden excessive voltage affects the pen drives, while switch on the computers.
