"There is a trade-off, obviously, between data endurance, longevity, as well as cost, and you need to know the differences to make the right choice of what it is you want," Hellmold added.

Lexar recalls JumpDrives

Hellmold, who is also general manager of the OEM products business at flash drive manufacturer Lexar Media Inc. in Fremont, Calif., said there have been "some substandard nonvolatile memory being used by some manufacturers that caused data losses in specific geographical regions."

"For the most part as I understand it, it has been the Asian region as far as people actually experiencing some data loss." Hellmold said.

Lexar has encountered quality control problems of its own of late (see "Lexar recalls dangerous flash drives "). As of Sept. 8, it was running a public notice of a limited recall of its JumpDrive Firefly and JumpDrive 1GB Secure II flash memory drives, saying it had identified a "potential issue" in the JumpDrive products sold between April 1 and May 31, 2006, in the U.S.