Date: Sat, 05 Oct 2013 17:46:22 +0200 From: Miroslav Lachman <000.fbsd@quip.cz> To: "Julian H. Stacey" <jhs@berklix.com> Cc: usb@freebsd.org Subject: Re: hot usb sticks Message-ID: <5250344E.2000500@quip.cz> In-Reply-To: <201310051335.r95DZOx4004869@fire.js.berklix.net> References: <201310051335.r95DZOx4004869@fire.js.berklix.net>
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Julian H. Stacey wrote: > Has anyone else noticed how hot USB sticks can get when used for backup ? > & also that IO errors occur after a while, which go away after a cold reboot. > > Not the whole stick, but the metal connector gets hot, so chip is > hotter still. Obviously one won't notice this on large plastic > encassed sticks, but 2 main sicks I use are: > sandisk 2Gig metal case "vendor" "0x0781"; "product" "0x5151"; > delock 8G miniature (~ 3mm of platic beyond plug) > "vendor" "0x05e3" "product" "0x0727" > > I usually notice this when I am updating (writing) a crypted (gbde) > UFS file systems using port/net/rdist6 (which only rewrites updated files). > > Source data is 1,446,438 K bytes in 42,611 files so average > size of 34 K. But a lot of the files are really small, (~/.* config > & mail files etc, so as rdist will be updating each one sequentially, > & each will take a read + write cycle on a stick block,& as many > small files will probably map to the same stick block, thats > some concentrated cycles. > > More stick detail at > http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/src/bsd/fixes/FreeBSD/src/jhs/etc/devd/jhs.conf > > Quite often I have to reboot my target host that has a stick inserted, > I believe regardless of OS version on USB target host > > Possibly there might be less heating when only reading (as read > cycles are also quicker), but mainly I'm backing up, writing. > > I was thinking of making a heatsink to clamp to a USB socket on an > extension cable, but before that I'll try hanging a USB extension cable > adjacent to a case fan. I have a few USB sticks, some of them are really old (and fast!), for example 512MB A-Data with 200x speed, or 8GB 133x. These fast sticks are almost cool. Some cheap modern sticks are hot even if used as read-only for booting ZFS backup server, where whole base system is on UFS USB stick monted read-only and all writes are on ZFS partitions of 4 HDDs. Even in this RO scenario, the hot stick died after about 2 years. Writes on it was made about 3 times a year because of system or ports updates. So in my case: newer -> cheaper -> slower -> hotter = shorter life. Miroslav Lachman
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