Flashdrive Stress-Test

Hey everyone. Today I decided to test the durability of a flash drive, and I found my tests to be quite interesting.

Well, to start out with, I must tell you that this is a Kingston DataTraveler 1GB, (I just upgraded) and this little thing has already gone through the washer once or twice. So I decided to put this thing through abnormal flashdrive use.

Ok, the first thing that I did was take a plastic container and fill it with water, put the flashdrive in, and seal the container and shook it up a bit. I left it in there for about 10-15 minutes.

2. Then I put tap water into the microwave for 2 minutes, (it was really hot) put the flashdrive in a glass tupperware container, poured the water in, and sealed it up and shook things up a bit. I left it in there for about 10 minutes.

3. Next, I put a cup of coffee in the microwave for 2 minutes, and did the same thing with the water for 10 minutes.

4. In the meantime, I was boiling some water in a tea kettle. So I did the same thing again, only with boiling water.

5. Then I took it out, and got ready to dry it off. I took our hair dryer and opened the flashdrive to the core, put a glove on, and toasted the thing until it was dry.

So I did all of this, cooled it off, and stuck it into my computer. Amazingly, the flashdrive still worked! I was able to do everything that I was normally able to do, and it worked just great.

So then I decided to do even more extreme tests.

6. The next thing I did was put the flashdrive on the roof (it is 105 degrees ferenheight outside) and left it there for more than an hour. When I went out to get the flashdrive, the thing was really bendable.

7. So I took it inside to let it cool off, and in the meantime, I threw it really hard at the ceiling. It broke into 3 pieces, but I was able to put it back together easily. Ok, then it was time to put it into my computer. This time (not surprisingly) it was still working!

8. So then I filled a cup full of water, put the flashdrive in, and stuck it into the freezer. When I got it out, the whole thing was frozen. So I stuck it on a plate out in the sun to dry out, (the thing was stuck in an icecube) After it was dried off, I plugged it in, and it still worked. By now I am running out of ideas to use on it.

I am going to do a few more tests, like the dishwasher. I will update this list of tests when I do.

The point is that these things are pretty hardy. You could not do this with a hard drive and still expect it to live, (though I may try)

I think that I am going to get a large 16-32 GB flashdrive for backup sometime in the future.

Please post your flashdrive (or hard drive) experiences.