Which USB flash drives use static wear levelling?

For the last few months I've been using a cheap, small flash drive to hold a lot of temp files, along with a bunch of backups.

In other words, 95% is full and the remaining tends to have temp files written to it.

The drive probably uses dynamic wear levelling where only the free space gets cycled through the writes. That means that the empy area is wearing out at a much much faster rate than the area where the archives are.

So, my question is: Which of the Corsair flash drives use static wear levelling to spread out the wear over the whole drive, not just the free space?

I've looked at your data sheets and it apears the voyager mini uses static levelling. The others don't say though.

(I'm not that fond of the idea of buying a mini, though. It looks fragile. I'd be afraid of snapping the connector off.)

I looked at your old FAQ and it says none of your drives use static levelling. But that is old and obviously wrong.

Some sites suggest that all of your voyager drives use static levelling. Other sties suggest only the survivor ones. And still others say only the 32g+ voyager ones use static wear levelling.

So, I figured I'd come here and ask directly.

I know, I know... you are going to say that all of your drives are reliable and guaranteed for 10 years etc. Fine. I'm not going to disagree with that. But I'd still like to know which ones use dynamic wear levelling and static wear levelling so I can make a personal choice.

Thank you.

I am sorry I do not have specific drive information like that but some use Static and some use Dynamic depending on the controller that it used.

Sounds like you are saying it can vary even within the same model. That it just randomly depends on what shipment of controllers you get that particular week....

That doesn't sound too good from a quality control / reliability point!

However the bottom line is this if you purchase one of Flash Voyagers or Flash survivor drives and they ever fail in the 10 Year period we will be happy to replace them.

Unfortunately that's not too good.

I'd really rather have the data wear levelled over the whole thing so I minimize the risk of loosing data. Not wait until I actually loose data and then get a replacement drive from you. It's the data that's important, not the drive!

I've read in that FAQ pdf how you calculate that 10 years guarantee. If the drive is mostly full, then those free blocks are going to start wearing out a heck of a lot faster than what it implies.

If I have to wait for the thing to actually fail (and loose data) and then get another, then I might as well buy some other, cheaper brand device.

As I said, its the data that's important and not the phyiscal drive itself.

My data is just 'personal' stuff and not critical company secrets or such. But its important to me, which is why I was wanting the most reliable flash drive I could find.

The type of wear leveling a specific controller we use will have no impact on how long one drive will last over another.

:confused: ??? That certainly doesn't make any sense.

Based on your own pdf FAQ the longevity of a flash drive will be DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to the number of blocks available for the wear levelling to use.

With a flash drive 99% full (for example), that would leave relatively few blocks available for the dynamic wear levelling routines to use. And if the drive stays mostly full, then those same spare blocks will get used over & over & over. (Personally, I tend to let stuff accumlate until a drive gets full and then delete junk. That's not a good pattern for a flash drive because that will concentrate the writes into the same decreasing number of available blocks.)

For static wear leveling, the entire flash drive is available. It's litterally comparing 100% available for wear levelling versus 1% available for wear levelling.

Either you are wrong or the faq pdf (and much of the internet research) is wrong.

The way you use the drive and the type of file system will have more of an impact,

Lots of small temp files that can get created & deleted. As well as log & data files that will get opened, written to, closed. Then repeated. Possibly even written to a few bytes at a time. (Out of my control. I don't know for sure they do that, but there is a possibility.)

Other PortableApps that will do no telling what style of flash I/o since they think they are still on a hard drive and can write as much as they want.

and for any data that is important I would strongly suggest more than one back up point especially with any removable data.

I do have backups. Lots of backups. But they stay at home.

When I'm gone, I'd really rather depend on a light weight flash drive rather than having to dig out my bulky 2.5" portable drive.

It's a lot easier to have a flash drive with my PortableApps and my other stuff than trying to carry & plug a hard drive in.

But I think I understand what you are trying not to say....

Corsair has an image for highly reliable stuff (which is why I came here) and you don't appreciate people asking embarrasing questions that, if answered, could run counter to that image.

And that us (supposedly) dumb consumers should just shut up and be grateful. :(: