People tend to be very careful about their electronic devices which is certainly a very good practice as many of them are rather fragile and can be damaged permanently with some inaccurate actions. At the same time, there are many false believes about the things which can damage particular gadgets and such common devices as USB flash drives are one of the most controversial examples.
Because of their small size and portability, flash drives tend to get into various unpleasant situations which are potentially dangerous for them. Certainly, it is good to know which of these situations are really dangerous for these devices. This article will help to understand it.
Can water destroy a flash drive?
There is nothing strange in the fact many people avoid getting their flash drives soaked in water. Indeed, the majority of electronic devices will not be happy about getting some water and this can actually make them severely damaged. Yet, this is not the case when it comes to your USB flash drive.
If the device has been wet for some reason, you can still use it without any problems. The only thing which should be done is giving the drive some time for getting dry again. Usually, a day is enough for this purpose. At the same time, you absolutely should not insert a wet flash drive into your computer as this can destroy both the drive and the computer. This is the only situation which can lead to such outcome since there has to be voltage in a USB flash drive in order to damage it.
Of course, a frequent contact with water is not recommended for USB flash drives as it can gradually lead to corrosion inside the device. Still, a one-time event of getting your flash drive all wet will not cause any harm to the device.
Can physical removing a USB flash drive from your computer without prior removal from the system damage the device?
In all likelihood, you have wondered about this question many times. This question is extremely popular and many people prefer to avoid any possible damage by prior removal of their USB flash drives from the system.
This is a good practice as it will help you to avoid a possible damage of your files on the drive. Yet, it is crucial to understand that such a damage can occur exclusively in the situation of you have been copying or transporting some files to your drive from your computer and you decide to remove the device from the system without waiting for the end of this process. In such a situation, the files will either not be copied completely or they might be copied with some damages. In any other situations, nothing will happen to your flash drive at all.
By the way, this is not just a another belief of some less careful geeks. It is true because of the design of USB flash drives itself which have been created in such a way as to allow you remove them whenever you need without making any special preparations.
Is it possible to damage a USB with a magnet?
Young generations of people are not even concerned about keeping their USB flash drives nearby magnets whereas many people from older generations are extremely careful about avoiding such situations. The roots of such a belief come from the time of floppy disks as they were indeed susceptible to magnets.
There was such a possibility because of the way the information was written of floppy discs. This was achieved through magnetising the surface of a disc. The next step was covering the disc with a special ferromagnetic layer. If such a disc contacted a magnet, this could certainly damage the information stored there.
This does not happen anymore since the modern memory storage devices are based on the NAND technology. This means you can store your USB flash drive in close proximity to magnets and this will not cause any changes in their performance.
Is it possible to damage the information on a USB flash drive by inserting it into a plugged charger?
Some people are sure something rather bad can happen to the data they have on their devices if they will be inserted into a charger after plugging the latter one into an electricity socket. Even though this might look like a rather bad idea, in the reality, your flash drive will not even notice anything happened.
Strange as it might look, this procedure is not harmful for your device at all because the voltage in chargers is very similar to the ones featuring computers. That is why nothing bad will happen to your flash drives if you would like to conduct such an experiment.