A long-standing question: Can mobile hard drives and USB flash drives be hot-swapped? | Digital Literacy

Audit expert: Zheng Yuanpan

Professor of Zhengzhou University of Light Industry

Mobile disk, literally speaking, is a removable storage device. Currently, it is divided into two categories: one is a USB flash drive, and the other is a portable storage device.

Mobile hard disk source丨wiki

USB flash drives and mobile hard drives often experience various faults after a few years of use. Even if they are restored to use through disk repair or formatting, the time interval for maintaining a fault-free state will gradually shorten, and the risk of data loss will also increase.

So how do you tell if a disk is damaged enough to be retired? What indicators can help us determine this?

1

The criteria for judging their "death"

When using a USB flash drive or mobile hard drive, if the following situations occur, it is likely that it is about to fail:

1. The disk is not recognized by the computer. If the computer cannot recognize the disk when you insert it into the computer, or cannot read the data on the disk, the disk may be damaged to the point where it cannot be used.

2. Frequent data loss. If data on the disk is frequently lost or unreadable, and cannot be recovered even through repair, this is often a strong sign that the disk is no longer working properly.

3. The disk makes abnormal noises. If the disk makes abnormal noises such as rattling, squeaking, clicking, or humming, it usually indicates that the disk hardware has been damaged and needs to be stopped as soon as possible to avoid greater losses such as data loss.

If your USB flash drive or mobile hard drive encounters the above situation, don't try to hold on or struggle, and don't try to repair or format the disk, because these operations may further damage the disk, causing permanent data loss or even irreparable damage. At this time, you should find a spare as soon as possible and migrate the data.

2

How to extend the life of USB flash drives and mobile hard drives?

Avoid frequent erasing and writing on USB flash drives .

Because the number of refresh times of the USB flash drive is limited, generally around 100,000 times, we should try to complete the required operations in one deletion/overwrite to reduce the number of refresh times of the USB flash drive.

Source: laomaotao.net

Use a mobile hard disk to prevent the disk from not working for a long time.

Long periods of standby time can easily cause the disk rotor oil film to dry out, increasing the risk of disk read failure.

Please try to shorten the time the mobile hard drive is used on the computer and do not leave it plugged in for long periods of time.

Portable hard disks are usually used to temporarily exchange or store data, rather than being used as local hard disks. Portable hard disks are different from internal hard disks and require more protection and cannot always work in adverse environments.

Avoid using in unsafe environments, such as where there are harmful factors such as static electricity accumulation and high temperature.

This kind of unsafe environment can easily cause damage to the disk. When storing disks, they should be sealed as much as possible, kept dry, dust-free and without strong light, and the ambient temperature should not be too cold or too hot.

Keep the hard disk free from vibration and drop.

It is strictly forbidden to bump the hard disk when moving or transporting it. It is best to protect it with foam or sponge packaging to avoid damage to the disk.

Source: yiwodisk

Use appropriate tools for maintenance. For example, regular disk checks can promptly detect and troubleshoot problems such as abnormal disk reading and file corruption.

Avoid mixing different types of power cords. **The power cord of the mobile hard disk box has specific specifications, and the interface voltage of power cords of different specifications may be different. If you mix them randomly, it will destroy the box or damage the hard disk.

**

Source: yiwodisk

Don't "gamble" on products that are good but cheap. If you want to reduce safety risks and use the mobile hard drive stably, you need to choose high-quality and well-made equipment. Although the price is slightly higher, this is the most worthwhile choice.

3

Why does the hard drive crash when unplugged, but the USB flash drive is fine?

This actually involves the different storage methods of hard drives and USB drives.

Simply put, USB flash drives, like memory sticks, use flash storage technology, but unlike computer memory, data on USB flash drives will not be lost in large quantities even after a power outage.

As long as the system has been properly optimized, it can fully support hot-swap operations. For example, Windows 10 versions after 1809 have fully supported USB hot-swap functions (in fact, some previous versions also supported it), which means that unless a read or write operation is in progress, we can connect or unplug the USB drive at any time, and it will flush all the cached data into the flash memory chip (number 4 in the figure below).

Internal structure of USB flash drive Source: Wiki

What about hard disks? Hard disks use mechanical storage technology, which means they use mechanical movement to read and write data.

Internal source of 2.5-inch SATA hard drive丨wiki

If a mobile hard disk that is accessing data is suddenly forcibly unplugged, the mechanical head will stop working and will not be able to cut off the contact between the head and the hard disk platter in time, which will cause data loss, or even damage or crash the hard disk. Therefore, devices that store important data must wait until the computer safely uninstalls the hard disk before unplugging it to avoid data loss or hard disk damage.

In Windows, you can right-click the corresponding mobile hard drive symbol and select the "Eject" menu item in the subsequent right-click menu to safely eject the hard drive. This will ensure that all ongoing read and write operations have been completed and the head has stopped moving on the disk, thereby reducing the risk of hard drive damage and ensuring data safety.