The Goodmans USB Key of Death

23rd September 2005

I got a USB memory stick recently, only a 64Mb one, it came free with my Goodmans car stereo (GCE7205USB2 - CD/CDMP3/RDS Radio Head Unit with USB). The car stereo was tempting because it had a USB port, played MP3 CDs and cost less than £60 - including the free USB key.

I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised to find that the USB key died within about a week of use. And I probably should have contacted Goodmans customer services a lot sooner than I did. But it wasn't really that important. I'd probably blown it up somehow anyway.

On Friday I took the dead USB memory stick to pieces, out of idle curiosity. What I found, was that the flash-ram chips (labelled: JAPAN Z66000 04 24 F87048 HN29V25691BT-30) were clearly labelled "ROM USE ONLY" (see this pic):

They weren't meant for use in USB keys. They're lower quality chips designed for a very few write cycles (5-10 per lifetime only) - used for things like flash BIOS memory in routers. They're NOT meant for continual write/rewrite cycles as you would with a USB key.

Other people have been telling me horror stories of their own USB key failures, and loss of lots of data. The keys are convenient, but are they really reliable enough to be a true replacement to the floppy? At least when a floppy disk dies you've got a good chance of doing some sector-by-sector recovery to get some data back.

When your 64Mb USB key dies, it's goodbye to everything. So far I've had no response from Goodmans to my complaint about them using unsuitable parts. I'll let you know if I get an answer.

4th December 2005

I wrote this article over two months ago (however I decided not to put it online as I hadn't heard back from Goodmans, I wanted to give them a chance to do the right thing). I heard nothing from them - not even an automated acknowledgement.

The only way it seems you can contact them is via a form on the website (no email address is given), so I have no idea to know whether it is working or not.

I just sent them another message telling them I'd really like their answer, and alerting them to this page, although it won't take them long to find it. Seems we are currently number 1 in Google for "faulty usb key"  and, more amusingly "goodmans usb". We're number 3 for "faulty goodmans" - which I suspect gets quite a few searches!

Come on Goodmans, give me an answer!