usb flashdrive thingie naked

April 7, 2006 4:45 PM

My spiffy little USB flashdrive thingy is coming apart, coming loose from its plastic casing. The metal parallelepiped inside is easier to slip into my wallet and looks cooler, IMO, but I'm wondering what sort of damage all the plastic protected it from. Question:¿will it harm my USB flashdrive thingy to go about naked in the world?
posted by signal to computers & internet (12 comments total)

It could be the victim of static electricty. If you like how it looks, spraypaint it with clear spraypaint to seal it. A friend of mine and I did something similar with an old motherboard+peripherals to get it to run under water. :P
posted by cellphone at 4:51 PM on April 7, 2006

"It could be the victim of static electricity if you do that," rather.
posted by cellphone at 4:52 PM on April 7, 2006

It depends whether there's anything supporting the USB connector and anything stopping you twisting the circuit board. The latter seems the most likely way to do in your flash drive (or in my experience, any portable electronics).
posted by cillit bang at 5:05 PM on April 7, 2006

A couple of coats of clear fingernail polish will work, too.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 5:48 PM on April 7, 2006

"The metal parallelepiped inside is easier to slip into my wallet"

If you were putting the flash drive into your wallet before, that could explain why it has broken apart. Continued wear of that sort would probably destroy the drive before too long.
posted by stopgap at 5:55 PM on April 7, 2006

The longer it is, the more flexion it undergoes, and the more damage it will take from being carried in your wallet. If it's short, and strongly-made, it could last nearly indefinitely. But that external plastic housing was there to prevent the interior from getting flexed, so presumably it was stronger than the inside is.

This is why I like the Secure Digital cards... I keep readers on machines that don't have them built in, and just keep a card in my wallet. They're about the size of a postage stamp, and about as thick as a nickel, and appear to take no damage whatsoever from a wallet. I've had a card in mine for years without a problem.
posted by Malor at 6:06 PM on April 7, 2006

Oh, and you can get 2 GIGABYTE SD cards for about $75 now. Fast ones, too.
posted by Malor at 6:07 PM on April 7, 2006

I wouldn't worry about it.

Some guy's flash drive's case cracked so he embedded the actual flash memory and electronics in lucite.

I have an intellistick that I've kept in my pocket. Three years running and running on strong.

<knocks wood>
posted by PurplePorpoise at 7:03 PM on April 7, 2006

I can second the intellistick recommendation. It's a very durable little drive.
posted by odinsdream at 7:39 PM on April 7, 2006

You could try this. I recommend backing it up first.
posted by Yorrick at 9:48 PM on April 7, 2006

You can now get Secure Digital cards with built in USB. I had one of the tiny USB drives the size and thickness of a SD card, but the wallet proved too much for it after a while.

These look wicked cool, though.
posted by RikiTikiTavi at 10:40 PM on April 7, 2006

I have the 1gb verseion of this. It's TINY (that connector is the middle bit of a USB connector!), and the company also does a 2gb version.
posted by armoured-ant at 5:23 AM on April 8, 2006