this past year has really sucked as far as jumpdrives are concerned. i have gone through about 10 of them all different brands and sizes. no matter how careful i am they eventually crap out on me and stop being recognized by any computer i try. i've handled them gently, carriend in my front shirt pocket, carried in a case, set on the desk out of the way until needed and no matter what i try they eventually die on me. so aside from wasting money i now have a jumpdrive pyramid growing on my desk. please any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. thanks in advance.

Are you leaving them plugged in for long periods of time? This will invariably cause them to crap out. Rather than keep losing them, you might consider invresting in a miniature real USB hard drive.

If you're using the pendrive with linux, consider using the "noatime" option when mounting. This will keep the system from writing to the device when files are just read.

nope....only for a few minutes just enough to transfer files and in the workplace unfortunately is all windblows environment. and the only linux machine is my laptop at home that just now decided to accept an install of Ubuntu 7.10. My wife is linux illiterate and refuses to work with anything other than winblows. still trying to convert her. so for now i can just play with my laptop and Ubuntu. i'm wandering though....can jumpdrives die from esd if carried in a shirt pocket or maybe body chemistry makeup. i know i'm reaching for straws here but jumpdrives come in so handy and it's hard to get by without one. thanks for the quick responses.

Is a "jump drive" = "Solid state USB memory stick"?

If so, they do, eventually "crap out". But a re-partition and reformat usually sorts them out.

You will have problems with these if you remove them before you have unmounted (AKA "Safely Removed") them (in windows as well as linux).

Even then, windows sometimes says the stick is ready to be removed, but if you look at it carefully, the light is still flashing, and you need to wait until it has finished the data transfer before you remove it.

With linux I sometimes use the sync command before umounting a thumb drive just to be on the safe side. Anyone got a similar command for windows?

i wander if gparted would see the jumpdrive to format it? because how can you do that if windows refuses to see it?

Unlikely but yes it is possible to damage a flash drive by static electricity. Do your drives have a protective cap over the connector? Are your shirts made of a synthetic material?

i always keep the protective cover on the usb end until i need it and not sure of my shirts lol never paid attention. i think the next drive i get i'll wrap in electrical tape lol just to be sure and stop carrying them in my shirt pocket. weird part is i have an old lexar 256 that's been running fine for over 3 years. but i've taken to leaving it alone unless i really need it now just to be safe. the target store sells 128 meg drives for like $7 so i think i'll just stick with those for now until i get this figured out.

i have never had any trouble with my lexar jumpdrive sport, thease little beauties are known to withstand washing machine cycles and still work.

the only reason that is will soon replcae mine is that i stood on it when plugged into the front slot of my box and bent the usb connector

Stop buying crap drives.. I also bought a bunch of the Lexar jumpdrives here for work. Boss is using one for swap on his Vista machine cause the 1GB of RAM just wasn't enough and he's been using it now for 3 months, still going strong.

Another one got crushed, mostly the casing but we snapped it back and still works like a charm.