Yesterday, my PNY Atache flash memory stick drive started to fail on me. It can read all files just fine. So I managed to tar all the files into a backup.

I can reformat it in Win2000 or Knoppix just fine. But when putting files (of any kind) onto it will lock up the computer (W2k or Knoppix) every time after about a minute or so of writing to the device. It does this on two different computers that I've tried.

Conclusion: The drive is bad.

My query is: Does anyone know about how long one should expect one of these type drives to last under daily use as a Knoppix persistant home directory? Anyone know of any utilities to lock out a bad memory cell/sector?

I thought since these things don't have moving parts (other than moving from place to place) they should last quite a while and be very reliable from data loss. Guess I was wrong.

Anyone else run into problems with flash memory?

Thanks.

Kenneth Lantrip