USB Drives – Capacity, Life Expectancy, Recommendations

Drive Failure

Solid state drives, including thumb drives, deteriorate over time causing the drive to become unreliable. Faulty or failing drives can cause recording issues, error messages on your monitor, and in severe cases can cause your monitor to behave erratically. If your monitor continually reboots or gets stuck in Record mode removing/replacing the USB drive may resolve the issue. 

• If your monitor displays a file system error message it's easy to fix
  Video: USB drives – fix file system errors
• If your monitor locks up or continuously reboots
  Article: Thumb drives & monitor issues
• SeeSnake monitors are designed to prevent data loss and can recover lost or damaged videos
  Article/Video: USB Drives – Recovering "Lost" Videos

Drive Capacity

SeeSnake CSx series monitors with the latest software support the exFAT file system, which has a maximum storage capacity of 256 TB. Software updates for your monitor are free and can be installed from the mobile app or from USB.
Article/Video: Updating SeeSnake Monitor Software

Although you can use large storage drives we recommend using a smaller drive and copying the jobs you want to keep onto long-term storage at regular intervals – in other words don't keep all your eggs in one giant basket. Monitors with multiple USB ports like the CS65, CS65xr, and CS12x have a job copy feature that allows you to copy jobs from one drive to another without needing a computer.

Video: Copy jobs on your CS12x

Video: Copy jobs on your CS65x/CS65xr

Life Expectancy/Recommendations

Portable SSDs for use with laptops and PC computers are rated for the number of read/write cycles they can handle. Most USB thumb drives don't have this type of rating but typically last 10,000–100,000 write/erase cycles. When the limit is reached, the memory may not work properly, which can lead to data loss.

• The physical age of the device isn't as important as how many times it's used
• Extreme environmental conditions can cause a flash drive to fail prematurely
• Known brands like San Disk typically have better longevity/reliability
• We've seen off-brand drives fail within 30 days – or not work at all
• Video: Your Thumb Drive Has An Expiration Date!