USB Drives – Capacity, Life Expectancy, Recommendations

Drive Failure

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 and replacing the USB drive may resolve the issue.

• File system error message: Video — USB drives – fix file system errors
• Monitor locks up or continually reboots: Article — Thumb drives & monitor issues
• Lost or damaged videos: SeeSnake monitors are designed to prevent data loss and can recover lost or damaged videos. Article/Video — USB Drives – Recovering “Lost” Videos

USB Standard

SeeSnake monitors have a USB 2.0 interface. Many newer drives support newer USB standards and are backwards compatible with USB 2.0.

Drive Capacity

• CSx series monitors — any drive size; supports FAT32 and exFAT file systems
• CS series monitors — drives up to 32 GB; FAT32 file system only

Note: Many thumb drives don’t specify their file system on the packaging. A reliable rule of thumb: drives 32 GB and under are almost always FAT32; drives larger than 32 GB are almost always exFAT. Both are universal formats compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux. If needed, you can use a PC to reformat a drive as FAT32 (32 GB and under) or exFAT.

Life Expectancy

Thumb drives use NAND flash cells that degrade after a limited number of read/write/erase cycles. High-demand uses like video recording will significantly shorten a drive’s useful life.

• How often the drive is used matters more than its age
• Extreme environmental conditions can cause a drive to fail prematurely
• Video: Your Thumb Drive Has An Expiration Date!

Note: Removable drives can be lost, damaged, or fail. Copy jobs onto long-term storage at regular intervals. Your company network or a cloud storage service like Google Drive are ideal.

Brand Recommendations

Quality brands like SanDisk, PNY, Kingston, and Samsung have better longevity and reliability than off-brand drives. Off-brand drives purchased online may fail quickly — or not work at all.