Are you storing many important files in a removable USB flash drive? This portable device can get damaged readily due to careless handling. This article will introduce 6 effective tricks to protect your USB flash drive from corruption.
Unlike standard hard drive, USB flash drive provides us with much convenience due to its portability. Thus, many users prefer to store their frequently-used files in a USB flash drive. Nevertheless, this kind of drives is vulnerable since you may overuse and abuse it unconsciously. Various factors, such as extreme temperature, physical faults, etc., can cause drive damage.
Therefore, the USB flash drive is only suitable for short-run data storage or data transferring. You’d better not use it for long-term data storage or data backups. For backups, you can select an external hard drive, which is much more stable. As long as you have a current data backup in hand, even if the original data corrupt, you can get back them easily, similar to Outlook PST data recovery from PST file backups. The followings are 6 helpful tips for you to protect your flash drive from damage due to careless handling.
1. Beware of the Spark When Inserting USB Flash Drive
Have you ever seen any sparks when you attempt to plug in your USB flash drive to your computer? In reality, the sparks refer to electrostatic discharge between your flash drive and computer. You should keep cautious of it since it can fry both your computer hardware and the flash drive itself. And finally it will cause irreversible drive damage and data loss.
2. Remove USB Flash Drive Carefully
Apart from keeping careful when you plug in the USB drive, you should also look out when removing the flash drive. Computer has its proper solutions to disable the connections between itself and the drive. You shouldn’t unplug it when data is still accessed and transferred. Not only will the action render data loss, but also it will make impacts on the drive and accelerate the drive degradation.
3. Don’t Drop the USB Flash Drive
What’s more, you should prevent your flash drive from tall tumbles. In other words, don’t drop it. Otherwise, it will be subjected to physical damages. The best way to block this damage is to make use of a USB lanyard or key ring, which can keep it attached firmly to you.
4. Safeguard USB Flash Drive from Heavy Load
Like the other kinds of drives, flash drive is also vulnerable to heavy load. As we all know, a USB flash drive is far smaller than common hard drive. Hence, if it suffers great pressure, it will tend to die and even smash at worst. At that point, it is sure that the data in it will get compromised, too. So you should keep your flash drive lightweight.
5. Cap USB Flash Drive off When Not in Use
As usual, for protecting a USB flash drive, it always comes packed with a cap. This can prevent dirt and debris from intruding your flash drive through drive’s crevices. Never look down upon the dirt. With it accumulating, it can destroy the flash drive one day. So cap it off as soon as you unplug it from computer.
6. Don’t Defrag USB Flash Drive
Perhaps you have known that defragmentation can improve the performance of a hard drive. However, it is useless for USB flash drive. It is unable to do the same on the USB flash drive as the traditional hard drive. It can do nothing but to speed up the degradation of your flash drive. So it’s unnecessary to defrag a flash drive.
Author Introduction:
Shirley Zhang is a data recovery expert in DataNumen, Inc., which is the world leader in data recovery technologies, including repair corrupt SQL mdf db and outlook repair software products. For more information visit www.datanumen.com