In article , Ant
wrote:
In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Your Name wrote:
In article , Doc O'Leary
wrote:
For your reference, records indicate that
(Ant) wrote:
Either I'm having bad luck or USB flash drives suck even with various
sizes (e.g., 512 MB to 32 GB), well known brand names (e.g., SanDisk),
and cheap/free ones (SP [a few years] and Patriot [had it since
10/3/2015]). They don't seems like they don't last longer than a year.
I keep them in my drawers, wallets, etc.
Of course, anyone who remembers how unreliable floppy disks used to
be would treasure a one year life span.
I can't say I've ever had any real problems with floppy disks. I've
still got a huge pile of them (some magazine cover disks, some my own
disks). In fact, the biggest issue I've ever had with floppy disks is
the drive in my beige G3 dying and I didn't have the time nor equipment
to fix it, so I got an external USB one instead.
A large part of the issue many people had with floppy disks is due to
the way they treated them. Mine were and are always stored in boxes,
never simply thrown into bags or pockets alone.
The same goes for USB flash drives. I've seen people treating them
extremely badly.
Someone told me putting these tiny USB flash drives in my wallets that
go into my pants' front pockets are breaking them due to stresses. What
do you thnk of that? I see people having them on keychains and they hit
tables, desks, etc. hard and loudly a lot!
Unlike the physical components of a hard drive, a USB flash drive will
take knocks a lot better ... but in some models / badly made ones it
could cause to chips being dislodged, bent connectors, etc. There's
also the issue of the caps getting lost, and then dust, dirt, etc. can
get inside causing issues.
Whenever I take a USB flash drive with me (which is a relatively recent
thing since I continued to use floppy disks and then CD-RW discs much
longer than most other people), I always have it in my shirt pocket,
usually by itself. I never ever put anything in the back pocket of my
trousers - my wallet, handkerchief, keys pouch, etc. all go in the side
pockets.
I think, for the industry, flash drives are seen as the new floppy. It
doesnıt much matter who you go with, theyıre all built to be essentially
disposable.
That said, though, they all seem to come with a 2+ year warranty, so
youıd be getting some nifty free refreshes if youıre seeing failures
every year. Personally, I just buy the MicroCenter store brand in
whatever size $10 will get me, and it generally lasts until at least
the warranty runs out. Itıs not a huge expense, so I donıt worry
too much about it.
USB flash drives (thumb drive, keyring drives, pen drives, memory
sticks, whatever else you want to call them) and SSDs do have a limited
lifespan measured in the number of write cycles ... so using them
continuously (e.g. as an OS boot drive with things like virtual memory
going) as Ant said can be a bit silly and cause them to "wear out" much
sooner than simply using them to store files on for backup or
transport.
https://www.techwalla.com/articles/l...sb-flash-drive
http://www.storagecraft.com/blog/data-storage-lifespan/
http://www.flashbay.co.nz/blog/usb-life-expectancy
The weird part is that I was still installing mac OS Sierra v10.12 on
these two old USB flash drives. Is that too much already? I only
wanted to install and use the OS for quick tests like those bootable
read only live discs for OSes. 
In the past, I used these USB flsah
drives to copy all kinds of files (giant sizes too) to use between
various computers.
I love flash drives for being super tiny and light to stick into my
wallet to carry easily! Argh.
You can get portable hard drives that are fairly small (some even have
built-in USB cables so you can't lose / forget it), although nowhere
near as small as a USB flash drive of course, but on the flip side they
have far more storage and / or are cheaper than the equivalent storage.