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.
You must log in or register to comment.
I’ve quite literally never had one fail even under heavy abuse.
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
The only one I ever had break was one I accidentally smacked pretty hard perpendicular to the USB port it was in, and I’m still not 100% sure if it was the port or the stick that broke. It sure scrambled the directory listing in the file manager though. Lots of funny characters.
Pretty sure the port took damage because it didn’t work well with other things plugged in afterwards, and I’ve never used the stick again in case it’s turned into a port killer. That probably just me being paranoid though.
I think the real danger might be write cycles. Super cheap ones might run to only a few tens of thousands of writes per cell and might even do no wear-levelling, bringing that down further. Nonetheless, as I understand it, they usually lose write-ability before read-ability, so in theory you’d be able to get data off one you couldn’t write to any more. (In practice might be a different matter.)
Actual physical lifespan ought to be more than that if it’s in regular use. I have a 256MB one that was just shy of state of the art when I got it (must be coming up on 20 years old) and it still works fine. I don’t use it often though, so that might be in more danger of old-age rather than data integrity problems.
It seems to be a huge lottery. I’ve only had one or two fail but that was like 2008. Supposedly there is some sort of data rot or failure rate but I’ve never experienced it. Seems highly random
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
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.
It’s pretty random.
Carried a LaCie IAmAKey on my keychain for 10 years before it died. Probably used it a dozen times.
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.
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.
Obviously there will be backups, but I also don’t want to lose anything on it as much as possible.
Don’t rely on a USB stick for that, no matter the brand, at least based on my personal experience.
I mean there will be backups of said USB drive. Thanks for the input
Can be years, but it’s as much luck and storage conditions as anything else. Luck being that batch of components not having one tiny error, or the box not being dropped by a guy loading the truck.
Get 2 backups from 2 different high end companies. Store them somewhere cool and dark with little to no moisture, in a static bag. So a ziploc with a silica gel packet in a safe in a basement. Or even in a fake soda can in the back of your fridge.
I’d never trust a USB stick with my only copy of anything I care about. They get dropped, stepped on, accidentally dropped into vats of hydrofluoric acid, etc. Doesn’t matter how long it can theoretically last if its USB jack gets bent and becomes detached from the PCB.
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.
Buy one with square USB on one end, USB-C on the other, then if one fails you still have the other interface. The more reputable companies are better in this market. $17 should get you 128gb here
Not knocking cause I have one of these myself, but if a drive fails, isn’t it more likely because of the flash storage instead of the USB interface?
Depends how much you use it. I work in IT and plug my thumb drive in multiple times per day. In the past, most of my failures have been physical failures where the drive and the USB connection physically separate, or the USB connector just breaks. I have rarely encountered flash storage failures but I don’t just put them in drawers for years, they get used a lot.
in my experience they last as long as you can keep track of them, and, as long as the storage offered is congruent with your needs. I found a 16mb usb drive the other day. It still functions but I can’t think of what I’d use it for in this age, I have flac songs that are larger than the drive lol
I still use one I bought in 2007.
In my experience, they last until you look at the capacity a few years and several changes of use down the line and end up giving to someone for some weird reason with a single MS document filling it up.
Losing space due to write errors can be significant, but that’s only half a drive failure. Usually still can read the data. So if giving the drive away I would assume even “wiping” the drive won’t destroy the data.
My comment was a (half) joking one on the increase in capacity over time due to technology advance - and the bloat in software. As I recall, the early USB sticks that I had were something like 32mb - useless by todays standards. Meanwhile the increasing size of even blank .docx pages has been remarked on over the years.
