"Dr. ''Q''" <none@none.none> writes:
>
> What's the most stable/safe mini-drive? USB Flash, SD Card, PCMCIA
> Micro-Drive, other? ...I don't want to lose my data through drive
> failure.

Flash memory, in general, is very reliable and will last a long time,
regardless of the brand or form factor.

That being said, some manufacturers have absolutely lousy quality
control. I would, for instance, never buy one made by PNY - over the
past few years, I have bought three different PNY devices (one DIMM,
one SO-DIMM and one CompactFlash card) and all three failed (the RAM
modules were DOA, the CF card died after a month.)

If you stick with good brands, like Lexar, SimpleTech and SanDisk, you
shouldn't have any problems.

Of course, your usage will also matter. Don't use them for applications
that involve a lot of writing (like as a swap file or a temp-file
directory). Flash memory has a limited number of write- cycles, and
once it's worn out, it's dead. The number of cycles is typically in
the millions, but you can plow through this pretty quickly if your
software is writing stuff to it several times per second.

And always unmount the volume before disconnecting it. Otherwise, you
may end up with file-system damage that you'll need a disk-repair tool
or reformat-utility to recover from. In this respect, treat your flash
drive no different from a hard drive, zip, floppy or other writable
media format.

-- David