Can a memory stick go bad?

[MikeD]

I've been using a 64 mb memory stick for my clie and now it's having all these issues reading and writing to and from the stick to my computer with a USB sony memory stick card reader. What can I do to fix this? I wouldn't expect this since this is flash memory and not a HD..

Any ideas?
Mike

[rldunn]

I would copy all of your files to the PC, if still possible, and then reformat the MS.

[jiserrab]

It is also a good Idea to use the Clie to reformat. I used my PC with MSimport to reformat a stick and ended up with some (minor) problems. You can use Card Info or MS gate. But back up because it will erase all data on your stick. I have found that sony devices that use MS and can format them, format them for use with that particular device. For instance my sony digi cam can format a MS but does so to best accomodate the camera. It will still work in the clie but will not include certain directories. ;)

[MikeD]

Okay, at first, my clie couldn't reformat the stick. I put it in my Sony digicam and it was able to reformat it. I put the stick back in my Clie and reformatted again. now, I put the stick into my card reader on my mac and I still get problems copying a bunch of files to my memory stick. It didn't happen though when I tried a 16mb memory stick. Do these things go bad? Reminds me of the ole Floppy days.

[Flash-57]

People have mentioned that the memory sticks will go bad after a certain number of reads and writes. And, the number they mentioned wasn't terribly large--something in the thousands.

Someone asked if they should defragment their memory stick. The answer was, "No", because that would use up a few hundred of the several thousand reads and writes the stick had in it.

Perhaps that's true, I don't know. I've used mine constantly for a year and a half now and not had any indication it was going bad. But then, I don't defragment mine or run disk scans on it. Every month, I just copy everything on the memory stick to a place on my hard drive. I burn a CD of the copies every few months.

If my memory stick does explode one day soon, I have several backups (admittedly, the backups will be a bit old, but hey, that's good enough).

[jomoco5]

Originally posted by rldunn
I would copy all of your files to the PC, if still possible, and then reformat the MS. I would also recommend doing the formatting on the Clie instead of your card reader. That alone could be the problem . . .

Good luck!!

[DanT]

Have 5 sticks.  Two of them are more than a year old. One of them is used for daily RAM backup with BackupBuddy VFS. None of them goes bad, knock on wood.

[jims]

Originally posted by MikeD
Can a memory stick go bad?


Only if it never got any love and encouragement at home when it was young! Although sometimes they could end up hanging out with the wrong crowd...like SDs or Compact Flash cards...heaven knows what kind of influence they could be on your innocent MS! :D

[madkins007]

My experience is that sticks can and do go bad. About 1/2 fo the Lexar sticks I have owned have gone bad while none of the SanDisk have (knock on wood!)

I have no idea if read/write cycles are the culprit, although the sticks did not go bad in order of age or use. One of the sticks went bad even though it had never been in a card reader, while other sticks are in the card reader often.

The same goes for using defrag- I do this on most of my sticks, bt one that rarely if ever got defraged went bad anyway.

I DO suspect that they don't like to be flexed, even a bit (I carried one in my wallet and I think that it got flexed a little and that is why it went bad.)

[DanT]

Here is another data point for the Lexarn't working for you. I purchased two of 128MB Lexar MSs from Dell once. Luckily they were DOA. So I returned them back for full refund, including the shipping, since they were indeed DUDs. From then on I stayed away from Lexar. I have 2 from Sony and 3 from SanDisk w/o any problems.

[NJL!2016]

I've had a 128 MB Lexar MS since christmas and i haven't had any problems...oh wait i have. When I put the MS in my Dazzle* Card Reader, my PC freezes. Now i have to use MSImport

[MikeD]

Wow, a lot of Lexar complaints.. My lexars are fine... Use them for my digital camera all the time.. It's the 64 MB SONY memory stick that's going bad for me...

[utahjazz85]

Actually, Fox is starting a new series

"When Memory Sticks go Bad"

































































lol

[GeekGod]

If it's Lexar, it was bad from new. They are CRAP!

Pretty rare for a Sony or SanDisk to go bad, but hey, anything can be defective. Sounds to me like it may be your card reader that is bad (another possibility, anyway).

The odds of actually wearing out a stick from normal read/write cycles is pretty much zip. The number of cycles an NVRAM device can tollerate is very high. If you actually tried to wear one out, I think your Clie would fail first.

[Wahoo47]

Although this thread is old, it's one of the few Google turned up on mem sticks going bad... so it must be rare... don't know if you all will even notice this after a couple of years, but I feel impelled to post.

Had a 128 MB Dell USB memory stick just go belly up. In light of your posts above, its post mortem may be interesting:

1. brand new (c.a. 3 weeks) machine = Insprion 9300 = wide 17" laptop :-0)) It's a killer. Very stable ... knock on silicon. XP pro, sp2.

2. Stick likewise new, faster USB format. Used only about ten times, transfered c.a. twenty files between it and machines with slower USB.

3. Plugged it in, working fine... looked at files... OK. Drag copied about 2 megs of files. *WHAMO* all files on stick vanished with a "bad parameter" message.

4. Device recognized and "working properly" in device manager. But file type went from FAT to "unknown" and size went from ~128 Mb to ZERO!

5. Identical results on duplicate machine ... DELL is replacing it no charge.

Of course, I had back ups, but still lost my memory
ciao

[dragonsgames]

I hate it when I lose my memory, what were we talking about ;) :D