General reliability of USB storage

[woody]

Hi

 

we have had an unusual amount of reports of USB drives failing over the last few weeks - 8 or so. Some of these drives are flash memory, others are portable HDs but I was wondering if there could be a connection? My gut feeling is that staff are just not looking after them.

 

All staff are using laptops of differing models, running Windows 7 enterprise. The usb media is their own and so is likely to be all different types.

 

Failures include Windows asking to Format the drive when plugged in, or just not seeing the drive at all.

 

Any thoughts/ideas?

 

Thanks

 

Mark

[rad]

Nope, same here, tends to happen in waves normally nearer exam time.

 

We have students who have their one and only copy on their usb stick, it breaks then the poo flies to a pan...

 

We try and educate early, backup etc, but you know the score.

[DAZZD88]

I made the mistake (back when I was doing my NVQ/BTEC) of working from flash media...then it all went Pete Tong. Lesson learned.

[JonWPS]

It's an ongoing issue this. External HDs are generally fine as they're more recoverable, but I've had a few heart-stopping moments when I've realised certain members of staff have GBs of stuff on minute little USB pens that look like they were made in a DT class. Just a case of constantly educating people that if it doesn't exist in three places minimum, it doesn't exist at all. A few have learnt the hard way either by losing years of work, or having to pay a specialist firm to recover data.

[glennda]

Yep - we had a deputy head who had all sorts of data that was required by them, cost us £200 to get it recovered.

[Cools]

USB sticks are banned here Students have to email there work to them selfs .. but im looking to set up home access plus+

and staff have there drives synced at logoff and logon..