Ok to benchmark a USB flash?

[thechief73]

Hello,

It has come to the point that my lonely 4gb usb2.0 flash stick cannot cover my needs, and I have become tired of burning CD's/DVD's as a crutch.

I want to benchmark my current stick to see what kind of performance I am accustomed to and get an idea of what I want to replace it with.

But..... I have reservations, because of a distant memory of reading about how running disk benchmarks on flash of ANY kind is ill-advised (unless your doing the tests for journalistic purpose) due to the fact that it can cause premature and/or unneeded excessive wear on your memory and can also cause or lead to memory errors, read problems or complete failure. And maybe a few other things I cannot recall.

I would just like to hear others input on this because I seem to fail at finding any trace of where I read this originally or mention of it elsewhere besides information on todays SSD's. So is it for all intentions safe to run a few benchmarks? or should I just leave well enough alone?

Any links/references you can provide would be appreciated. There is not a lot out there on USB sticks and what there is, is spread all over

 

[Bacterius]

Yes, electronic drives can only be written/read a finite number of times. But it's fine to benchmark it a few times, just as long as you don't do so every day or week... they usually last years anyway.

 

[thechief73]

Ok, Thanks. That is kind of what I assumed, once wouldn't hurt, but don't go overkill with it. But AFAIK SDD's are still not advised. I just wanted to hear that its not a high chance of having an issue. Well anyhow here are the numbers.


* OCZ RALLY2 4GB *
- Disabled Write Caching
- About 2yrs old
- Used to backup MyDocs and Drivers\Software
- 80%+ Usage
- Backed-up and deleted contents before test
- Default Test Settings

If anyone knows off the top of their head if its ok to format these drives or not? or any benefits from doing so and whats best FAT, FAT32, or NTFS? Im running XP SP3, I am curious to know.

Thanks.