[SOLVED] USB pin force resistance?

[Oblivion77]

Dear all

I use a Kingston DT50 16gb [pen drive] to backup important documents. I have other backups aswell.

Last time I unplugged the USB drive, I was wiggling it carefully out of the USB port. Then I started to wonder, how much force can the USB drive withstand before it damages the inside of the USB drive.

Will the shield / plug on the USB drive break off before it cracks the whole circuit board inside the USB drive?

If the circuit inside cracks, will the NAND chip then bent, fall off or crack?

Thank in you advance for replying

Best regards

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

The USB plug on the end of a pen drive is fairly robust and in my experience you have to attack it with pliers to do any damage to the plug or it's internal parts (which I have done to prevent sensitive data being recovered from it when the pen drive has started misbehaving and has to be binned).

You shouldn't need to "wiggle" a pen drive to unplug it anyway. Just a firm pull is all that it takes.

Word of caution: You shouldn't really be using a pen drive as a backup media or for long-term data storage, they are not reliable enough for that.
Use them only for short-term storage such as when you need to transfer some files to another PC.

For backups and long-term storage you should use external HDD or SSD, or write-once optical discs.