Does formatting pen drive reduce its lifetime?

pratap singh, upendra · 2012-12-03T08:19:02+00:00

hello, one one of my friends pointed out that it is always better to delete the contents of the pen drive that to format it every now and then. He argued that formatting a pen drive more often than not reduces the life time of the hardware and so it should be undertaken only when it is absolutely necessary. I just want to inquire if his explanation was reasonable... regards, proffy

Does formatting pen drive reduce its lifetime?

pratap singh, upendra

Member

Updated: Oct 23, 2024

Views: 1.1K

hello,

one one of my friends pointed out that it is always better to delete the contents of the pen drive that to format it every now and then. He argued that formatting a pen drive more often than not reduces the life time of the hardware and so it should be undertaken only when it is absolutely necessary.

I just want to inquire if his explanation was reasonable...

regards,
proffy

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Abhishek Rawal

Member • Dec 3, 2012

No, formatting pendrive doesn't decreases its lifespan.
But yeah, Flash memory do have certain writes which is probably in millions so you need not to worry & format whenever necessary.
I will suggest you to delete files in Pendrive rather than formatting as formatting pendrive changes every bit to "0", so if by chance you wanna recover previous saved data in pendrive then you won't be able to; but if you have "deleted" it then there are many successful ways to recover data back.

Just use safely remove hardware option if you're using Windows or Unmount for Linux, before unplugging it from usb port.Just to take precaution that you're not damaging your Pendrive.

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Kaustubh Katdare

Administrator • Dec 3, 2012

The more you use your flash drive - more write and clean cycles it goes through, the flash drives tend to lose the storage capacity. After about 10,000 of write/clean cycles, the flash memory generally goes out of life. Taiwanese company Micronix has come up with a solution to fix this problem by temporarily heating the 'cells' to about 800 degrees and then cooling it. This temporary 'flash' restores the flash drive's life. The company now claims that they can do a several million of write / clean cycles with the new technique. Read about it here - #-Link-Snipped-#

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rahul69

Member • Dec 3, 2012

Troll_So_Hard
No, formatting pendrive doesn't decreases its lifespan.
But yeah, Flash memory do have certain writes which is probably in millions so you need not to worry & format whenever necessary.
I will suggest you to delete files in Pendrive rather than formatting as formatting pendrive changes every bit to "0", so if by chance you wanna recover previous saved data in pendrive then you won't be able to; but if you have "deleted" it then there are many successful ways to recover data back.

Just use safely remove hardware option if you're using Windows or Unmount for Linux, before unplugging it from usb port.Just to take precaution that you're not damaging your Pendrive.
Hi, can u site any references, that formatting the pendrive changes every bit to 0, as I have seen people recovering data even after formatting😲. I think the format only clears directory entries and File Allocation Table, the actual data remains there until it is overwritten by some other data 😀 .

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