Portable Apps Failure?

[cx]

I been running the Thunderbird Portable program as my email default for some time now, for which I blame Joe Gleason. For which I've thanked him many times as well.

I keep it on a Cruzer 4Gb USB drive. Been oooooh so very happy with the system and do think to download it to the desktop fairly regularly.

This very day, only hours ago, actually, I fired up the computer and that thumb drive was missing from My Computer when I tried to open it. Its little light was dark. I removed it and plugged it in again. The light flashed once and again went dark. Computer did not recognize it as being present.

Tried another device in the same USB port. Worked fine.

Did a re-boot on accounta I know that's the first thing y'all geeks are fixin' to recommend. No change.

Have removed and re-inserted the drive several times. No change.

My new laptop ain't even been turned on enough to be set up, so can't check it there. Maybe can check it on owling partner's laptop when he gets back.

But are those things prone to failures after only a year or so of use? Might be a little longer than that, but not two years, for sure.

[davem]

I've read that they have a finite number of read/write cycles, but don't know what the number is. Dunno if a year of daily use is a lot or not. I've got some much older than that, but I don't use them daily.

The portable apps can be run directly from the hard drive where you've backed it up though. That's the way I run portable apps, actually from inside a truecrypt archive on the hard drive.

[jgleason]

Flash drives can fail. I've seen some go real quick, like within a few weeks and also seen them last for a very long time. My current flash drive is a Kingston Data Traveler, 4GB. Going on two years now. Still have a 2GB Kingston that works and its been around for four years.

[jjwq8]

I've had a number of flash/thumb drives fail. None proved to be pooch proof. and for that matter titanium spectacle frames are pooch proof. Lenses not so much.

Obvious thing, take a pin and wrap a little cotton wool around it and swab the bus conductors. If that fails..................... BUY A NEW ONE YOU CHEAPSKATE!!!!!

Currently using a Transcend 16Gb that has worked well for many months despite being regularly bombed with viral crap from computers running chinese software.

Oh and the drives still work if they are washed and spun and 1000rpm and then lose the outer casing. Just call me careless

Oh... and i presume that your flash drive failure is purely coincidental to your recent raffle win and change of OS?

[cx]

I have the Portable Apps on my hard drive, Dave. Is where I backup the thumb drive alla time.

Too tard tonight, but manana I'll see do it load the actual program back onto a new thumb drive without I gotta do a download again. This would be a good thing.

I got a couple spare drives, Jeremy, but thanks for axin'.

Did plug the "bad" drive into another computer and it was still invisible.

And no, the Great Truck Robbery was couple months ago. Don't think it has anything to do with the recent failure.

I had just allowed the desktop to download some Windoze updates, though. Reckon ol' Bill Gates can actually kill portable media with his updates?

[jjwq8]

If one of the updates included the venal WGA or any of the numerous patches that redmond use to screw the pooch then i would say very probably yes.
I have a little app that will disable the wga nag screens and a larger bit of ware that will remove WGA altogether. Purely for ejumakashanul purposes of course
Suggest that you leave the auto update feature on for downloading but disable the autorun of the downloads and use the custom install that allows you to see what each update does and disable (not install) ones you think you may not like.

[cx]

I'm set up to look at the updates and select the ones I load, Jeremy. I generally do load anything that says its a security-type fix, though.

Best news is I had an extra USB drive just like the failed one. I also still had a program to clean off all that U3(?) stuff they load on there. And when I loaded the Portable Thunderbird on there from the hard drive it just made me a shiny new portable email program.

This is a good thing and I'm back into my "thank you, Joe" mode again.

[jgleason]

Good to hear you had a spare flash drive. Portable apps are great, no install and backing up just requires copying everything to a second location. Makes restoring a lot easier too.

[Tool Guy - Kg]

Originally Posted by jjwq8

Oh and the drives still work if they are washed and spun and 1000rpm and then lose the outer casing.

Yeah.....don't ask me how I know, but I can verify this.