How long does a decent USB stick last?
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I'm thinking about getting one for several purposes, primarily for portable software, some certificates and keys, and a few backups. Since it won't be powered off for more than a few days or weeks and won't experience heavy writing (although I plan to use Veracrypt and that may cause some stress)
How long can I expect it to last? Obviously there will be backups, but I also don't want to lose anything on it as much as possible.
It's pretty random.
Carried a LaCie IAmAKey on my keychain for 10 years before it died. Probably used it a dozen times.
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I have one from ~2004 that still works, a whopping thirty-two megabytes!
At least me ZIP drives has 100 megabytes of storage
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I have one from ~2004 that still works, a whopping thirty-two megabytes!
I have a 32gb one from 2006. I remember splurging on it because at the time it was definitely like a hundred bucks, maybe a little more. I still have it as well, and it's been in the washer probably twice and still works. Of course, I now have a few free 128gb 3.1 drives that the store microcenter gives out for free once or twice a year. Using a USB 2.0 feels like ancient tech when transferring 20gb or more.
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I'm thinking about getting one for several purposes, primarily for portable software, some certificates and keys, and a few backups. Since it won't be powered off for more than a few days or weeks and won't experience heavy writing (although I plan to use Veracrypt and that may cause some stress)
How long can I expect it to last? Obviously there will be backups, but I also don't want to lose anything on it as much as possible.
As someone who works in IT since 2005 I haven't seen many die. Then again we barely use them so maybe in my life I've handled about 10-15 and seen 2 die. One in spectacular fashion when our department gave us all one since they thought it was a tool that was needed. Every single one of them ended up dying within the year. Just goes to show quality of the product can matter significantly sometimes. Outside that, they are pretty reliable, but I also would trust them the least out of the other options available for storage.
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I've had several USB sticks that have degraded or failed due to heavy wear, but I'm the type of person that sets up a 8x256gb RAID1 setup for fun. Maybe that's a bit outside of "normal use".
RAID1 with 8 drives is definitely in the funsies department
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4GBThe first usb stick I bought more than 15 years ago, still works.
I had one that looks exactly the same but a green accent color instead of purple! Only 1 gig haha
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I'm thinking about getting one for several purposes, primarily for portable software, some certificates and keys, and a few backups. Since it won't be powered off for more than a few days or weeks and won't experience heavy writing (although I plan to use Veracrypt and that may cause some stress)
How long can I expect it to last? Obviously there will be backups, but I also don't want to lose anything on it as much as possible.
I still use one I bought in 2007.
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I'm thinking about getting one for several purposes, primarily for portable software, some certificates and keys, and a few backups. Since it won't be powered off for more than a few days or weeks and won't experience heavy writing (although I plan to use Veracrypt and that may cause some stress)
How long can I expect it to last? Obviously there will be backups, but I also don't want to lose anything on it as much as possible.
USB sticks are a consumable, they should not be treated as anything but temporary storage.
I would look into an external SSD instead.
This is my professional opinion as an IT technician.
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USB sticks are a consumable, they should not be treated as anything but temporary storage.
I would look into an external SSD instead.
This is my professional opinion as an IT technician.
Did you see a lot of hardware failures among USB sticks as an IT technician or what makes you have this professional opinion?
Presuming that OP doesn't lose their backup drive constantly the way that I do USB sticks. I'd probably take better care if it actually mattered
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Did you see a lot of hardware failures among USB sticks as an IT technician or what makes you have this professional opinion?
Presuming that OP doesn't lose their backup drive constantly the way that I do USB sticks. I'd probably take better care if it actually mattered
I have had several USB sticks that have corrupted files in my work, so many that I have simply accepted that USB sticks should be avoided for any kind of long term data storage.
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I'm thinking about getting one for several purposes, primarily for portable software, some certificates and keys, and a few backups. Since it won't be powered off for more than a few days or weeks and won't experience heavy writing (although I plan to use Veracrypt and that may cause some stress)
How long can I expect it to last? Obviously there will be backups, but I also don't want to lose anything on it as much as possible.
I have seen only a single usb stick die
It was a 2GB one bought a very long time ago
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I'm thinking about getting one for several purposes, primarily for portable software, some certificates and keys, and a few backups. Since it won't be powered off for more than a few days or weeks and won't experience heavy writing (although I plan to use Veracrypt and that may cause some stress)
How long can I expect it to last? Obviously there will be backups, but I also don't want to lose anything on it as much as possible.
I've always managed to lose them before they die. Current senior partner of the group is a 4gb HP drive circa ~2013. My loyal document carrier.
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I'm thinking about getting one for several purposes, primarily for portable software, some certificates and keys, and a few backups. Since it won't be powered off for more than a few days or weeks and won't experience heavy writing (although I plan to use Veracrypt and that may cause some stress)
How long can I expect it to last? Obviously there will be backups, but I also don't want to lose anything on it as much as possible.
Honestly, this vastly depends on the type of drive, and who made it. I have had cheap drives fail after 6-7 months of usage before but, that was because I was using it for external storage for an RPI so it was doing a lot of writes.
Using it for a write few read many style system(like bootable OS images via ventoy), I had had flash drives that have lasted 10+ years now. but I wouldn't recommend using them for anything that was super write heavy.
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4GBThe first usb stick I bought more than 15 years ago, still works.
The very first USB stick I bought was 32MB and I thought that was a lot cause it held way more than a floppy.
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The very first USB stick I bought was 32MB and I thought that was a lot cause it held way more than a floppy.
In 2000 or so a 1GB stick was $999 at Tiger Direct. Who could use a whole gig?!
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Honestly, this vastly depends on the type of drive, and who made it. I have had cheap drives fail after 6-7 months of usage before but, that was because I was using it for external storage for an RPI so it was doing a lot of writes.
Using it for a write few read many style system(like bootable OS images via ventoy), I had had flash drives that have lasted 10+ years now. but I wouldn't recommend using them for anything that was super write heavy.
Using it for a write few read many style system
What does this even mean?
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The very first USB stick I bought was 32MB and I thought that was a lot cause it held way more than a floppy.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Mine was 64 and thought i found gold when I found a lost 256mb. Think I paid about $100 ircc. Had been using 100mb zip drives before usbs.
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I'm thinking about getting one for several purposes, primarily for portable software, some certificates and keys, and a few backups. Since it won't be powered off for more than a few days or weeks and won't experience heavy writing (although I plan to use Veracrypt and that may cause some stress)
How long can I expect it to last? Obviously there will be backups, but I also don't want to lose anything on it as much as possible.
If you're going to use it regularly, get a few and sync them together once week or so. Or sync to cloud. Or sync to a folder on your PC. They usually last awhile, biggest issue is losing them.
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Using it for a write few read many style system
What does this even mean?
It's referencing the type of operation being done on the drive. A write operation being changing the information on the drive, a read operation being reading something from the drive. A write few read many indicates that most operations on the device are read operations/not changing the data on the device. Some examples of this would be a thumb drive being used for presentations or being used as a source to copy files to another system. These setups are fairly low write count when compared to read count. An example of a write many read many would be using the drive as a swap drive, or as an OS drive such as tails where the intent would be keeping the OS on the drive instead of just copying it to make the actual file system
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4GBThe first usb stick I bought more than 15 years ago, still works.
I have this exact same USB drive, 4GB also bought around 15 years ago it still works like a charm
