Magnetic storage versus flash.

[Xylob the Destroyer]

Hey all,

I'm currently using a 2GB Maxtor hard drive as my back-up device. The fact that it's a 2GB drive should tell that it's old as dirt.
It's S.M.A.R.T. capable and enabled, and I've run several of those 'drive health' analysis proggies on it and they all give at a green light and say that it's a long way from failure -- S.M.A.R.T. checks, read/write tests, CRC tests etc.

But it's old. Really old...
And Photoshop is always bitching at me for having my "scratch" file on the same drive as my page file and sometimes the application freaks out and does some weird flickering stuff.

I happen to have two spare, brand new SanDisk 2GB USB U3 "smart" cruzer thumb drives laying around. http://www.sandisk.com/Products/Item(1922)-SDCZ6-2048-A11-SanDisk_Cruzer_Micro_2GB_Black.aspx

My thoughts are that I could plug one into a rear USB 2.0 port and format it as NTSF and then do one of three things:
1. use the flash drive as my back-up drive and set the 2GB hard drive as either the page file or the PS 'scratch' file while keeping the other file on my C: drive
2. keep the hard drive as the back-up and use the flash drive as either the page file or the PS 'scratch' file & keep the other file on my C: drive
3. plug both of the flash drives in and set one of each of the 2GB devices as page file, scratch file, and back-up.

I really don't know much about how flash memory works, or if/how it can fail.

Any thoughts?

TIA!

[jagabo]

Google published some research they did on their drives. They found that SMART can only detect about 30 percent of impending failures.

You usually can't format flash drives with NTFS.

[redwudz]

It would be worth a try. AFAIK, those drives are unlikely to fail or wear out with normal use. They can get corrupted, but that wouldn't be common with a drive that's plugged in all the time.

Can you get PS to recognize the USB drive as a scratch disk? That was the problem when I tried to select one as a scratch disk. It wasn't listed in PS at all, even with a NTFS format. But I'm running Vista on the computer that has PS installed.

[Xylob the Destroyer]

...You usually can't format flash drives with NTFS.

I have 4 of these particular drives, and they can be formatted as NTFS.
The "stop and safely remove this USB device" stuff doesn't work once their formatted that way, but that would be an issue as I wouldn't be unplugging these.

I've read Google's article on the S.M.A.R.T. technology and that's a part of the reason I'm starting to look for a solution to replace my ancient 2GB drive.
I'm not going to waste the $$$ on a new hard drive when the smallest you can find these days is 120GB. That's WAY more space than I need and partitioning would be pointless as well (I think it's pointless in any case!) as I already have a 120GB C: drive that replaced a failing 40GB and I'm only using less than 10% of that 120GB now.
This is my office PC BTW, not the HTPC listed in my profile.

Now that you mention it, I think I tried playing around and getting PS to recognize a flash drive for the scratch file before and it wouldn't. But that drive was FAT32. Maybe NTFS would make a difference?

[Webster]

One thing you should be aware of is that some of those cheap "off brand" flashdrive are using really sub standard parts and are subjected to more frequent failure. It's all depended on who made the flashdrive. I wouldn't want to spend 2 hours of image processing and get a corrupted image or couldn't load the image again due to flashdrive failure at a later date. I'd do think is good for temporary storage for transfer and not for permanent archive/backup.
Webster.
P.S. as a side note, I found out that if you formated the flashdrive NTFS instead of FAT32, some(not all) of the linux distro will not able to read the drive.

[Xylob the Destroyer]

Well, I certainly wouldn't consider SanDisk to be a "cheap off brand", and I have no interest whatsoever in Linux...

[Webster]

edited sorry, double posted

[Webster]

Well, I certainly wouldn't consider SanDisk to be a "cheap off brand", and I have no interest whatsoever in Linux...

You, sir, are corrected that Sandisk is not a "cheap off brand."

Under optimal conditions, the lifespans of [SanDisk] USB flash drives can be up to
10 years or more when used like a CD-R; when used like a CD-RW, the
lifespan may vary.

from an article in 2006 which may not applied today so do take it with a grain of salt.......
http://www.cnet.com.au/desktops/storage/0,239029473,240063522,00.htm

[jagabo]

From everything I hear, flash drives are far less reliable than the manufacturers want you to think. I don't know how much of this is user error (eg, write some files then pop the drive out without waiting for writes to finish) but given how cheap 2 GB flash drives are I would cycle through 3 of them for backups -- if 2GB is enough for your backups. Using one for PS scratch drive is OK if you're willing to accept that one day you may lose a few hours' work.

[Ai Haibara]

Under optimal conditions, the lifespans of [SanDisk] USB flash drives can be up to
10 years or more when used like a CD-R; when used like a CD-RW, the
lifespan may vary.

Sure, if you write to the flash drive once and never change the contents again. I've seen enough flakiness - not a lot, mind you, just a little - that I'm still wary of trusting more long-term/important backups to a flash drive.

[redwudz]

Now that you mention it, I think I tried playing around and getting PS to recognize a flash drive for the scratch file before and it wouldn't. But that drive was FAT32. Maybe NTFS would make a difference?

I tried with NTFS, FAT, exFAT and FAT32 and no luck with PS even seeing the drive as a scratch disk. I would get that problem resolved first.

From what I'm seeing in PS tutorials, you want a very fast drive for a scratch disk, s minimum of 2 to 3 times your installed RAM quantity.

[jman98]

You usually can't format flash drives with NTFS.

Not sure what you base that comment on. Windows will let you do this, although the mechanism for doing so is a bit obscure and hard to find (do a web search for guides on how to do it). I have an 8 GB flash drive that I formatted to NTFS under Windows XP with no problems.

[jagabo]

You usually can't format flash drives with NTFS.

Not sure what you base that comment on. Windows will let you do this, although the mechanism for doing so is a bit obscure and hard to find (do a web search for guides on how to do it). I have an 8 GB flash drive that I formatted to NTFS under Windows XP with no problems.

I looked it up, you're right. The procedure is to go to the disk management utility and change the drive Policies from "Optimize for quick removal" to "Optimize for performance". Then you can format it NTFS.

[Ai Haibara]

If Windows still has it around, can the 'convert' utility be used to convert a FAT USB flash drive to NTFS? Or is that not necessarily a good idea for a flash drive? (using the utility on it, not turning it into an NTFS drive)