Overheated Flash Drive?

[titanmiller]

I was trying to download some torrents directly to a 64GB mini-flash drive. In other words, the flash drive would be thrashing due to the crazy read/write required of torrent download/uploads.

Anyway, the metal part of the drive was too hot to touch (probably 60-70C). Is this normal? Are drives tested under such extreme usage cases? Can this cause failure of the drive?

BTW, the drive proved to be too slow and my Bit Torrent Client froze as it waited for the storage to catch up.

Here is the drive I was using: http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Ultra...e=UTF8&qid=1431478123&sr=1-9&keywords=sandisk

 

[fralexandr]

USB drives can get hot if put through rigorous work. This seems to be a somewhat common problem on performance oriented USB 3.0 flash drives while plugged into a USB 3.0 port. Heat can reduce read/write performance.
Heat dissipation is related to surface area and airflow. Since USB drives are passively cooled, small drives like the sandisk ultra fit will get hot.

while heat build up can be bad for electronics, USB drives are pretty durable.
That said, Sandisk recommends max operating temperature of 45C, storage temp of 70C for the ultrafit.
http://www.sandisk.com/products/usb/drives/ultra-fit3/

http://forums.sandisk.com/t5/All-Sa.../Ultra-Fit-USB-3-0-Excessive-Heat/td-p/336404

 

[VirtualLarry]

I had a PNY Attache 2 drive, that would overheat if you copied more than around 2GB of data off of it at a time. It would freeze, and you would have to unplug it and plug it in again to get it to work.

That's just sequential reading, not writing.

 

[razel]

Yes it's normal. All the data that we're pushing these days is electricity. And we are pushing that into tiny, tiny things. It's almost like charging something and it can't absorb it fast enough so it becomes heat. I'm more impressed what we can do with such little electricity like with 802.11 wireless. 200mbps using only milli or centi-volts. Wow.