Lifespan of Flashdrives?

Checkout these links.

They don't last forever, but 1 year is ridiculous.

I have never had a flash drive die before I loose it.....

I know, right? One day, millions of years in the future, geologists will discover strata consisting entirely of lost flash drives, car keys, and mismatched socks.

I vote for the socks.

Socks have already been found by these 2:

OMG! I used to love watching Ren and Stimpy!

Flash drive life is supposedly quite long, flash drives were (are still?) even used as cheap memory RAM boosters in some computers.

Lots of information available online, boiling down to a few key points

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_flash_drive

http://www.flashbay.co.nz/blog/usb-life-expectancy

Moral of the story is failure seems to be as low as 10,000 writes unless the USB is abused.

Quality shouldn't matter much as they are all coming out of the same factories in general with different case options (of various ruggedness), so sticking to name brands is still your best bet. That and multiple backups (nowdays this could also include online in the 'Cloud'), taking care of the USB pins when it is inserted and removed, and storing in a mild, safe environment to limit the chances of premature failure.

Maybe your drive that failed after 1 year got hit by a cosmic ray or something.

From what I've read they should last 5-10 years being used once every day and the USB hardware will likely fail first.

They usually last long enough that they are obsolete by the time they fail.

It might be a good idea to back up the backups!

Use a USB hard drive instead of a USB flash drive? I've dropped flash drives, put them through the washer/dryer, left them idle for months, exposed them to high magnetic fields, and they still worked when plugged in. Do the same thing to an electromechanical hard drive and you're screwed (unless it's a USB SSD). Also, flash drives have a much smaller footprint and weight.

The rate at which an SSD or flash drive wears out is a function of its capacity and the number and size of its files. If you want to be ultra safe try doing two things, size it four times larger than the size of the backup files, and store the file twice. For example; if your total backup is 16GB, use a 64GB drive and store the backup twice. When the OS asks if you want to overwrite or rename, say rename, and you'll have a backup of the original, each of which occupies one quarter of the drive, or half in total.

Since the drive management firmware has wear leveling algorithms, it will spread the wear over the entire drive instead of constantly overwriting the same 16GB. In the event that the original file becomes unreadable due to defect in the drive, you should be able to read the renamed copy.

Well, he is having a problem with reliability. Considering that it is being used for nightly backups, it is unlikely it will find itself in somebody's pocket and be run through the wash. The failure isn't a limitation of the read/write-cycle capacity, but an outright hardware failure. USB hard drives, on the other hand, tend to be much more reliable in my experience. Flash drives are cheap commodities, like ball-point pens. Not designed for mission-critical applications and certainly not something I would personally wish to use for backup of critical files. Pix of my cat? Yes. But not backups.

His best bet IMO is to map a network drive and keep his backups there. Those, in turn, are typically backed-up as well.

I think I would probably back up twice using 2 drives. If one drive gets corrupted, two backup copies on it may be no better than one.

I have a pc that seems to kill flash drives and USB sticks. Measuring the ripple of this pc, it looks like its higher than the other pc with no problems.

Also the other pc is on a decent UPS, so the power is alot smoother. Around where I live it is wind farm city!!!! Alot of inverters on the grid, alot of electronic stuff is now short lived around here.

Sounds like like you need an AC conditioner (not just an air conditioner, LOL).

How about you put your system on a AC-DC-AC inverter (one with new, improved Tide) Tide gets out the stains.

Change the power supply, I had a build that hard drives wouldn't last, that stopped after I put in a quality power supply. Same wattage but I went with a name brand one.

What brand of flash drive are you using? Like everything, you get what you pay for.

For something critical like what you are using them for, I would be using ones made by a reputable memory manufacturer. Lexar, Kingston, PNY, Sandisk, Verbatim, are all quality drives. I am sure there are more. Walmart branded or something that sounds like shweng shai is probably not.

Good question - we had been using Kingston. But these latest ones just have the company logo on them.

Maybe we get them from the same place we get our logo'd shirts from!!

Kinston is a good name, maybe they are licensing their name out???? We use Verbatim and Lexar at work, 8 GB, not had any problems with them other that they end up in my pocket and they follow me home. Some have gone through the washer and still work, believe it or not. My personal one is a 16GB HP one, size of my thumb nail, I loose it, find it, have washed it, but it still works....about 5 years now.

Work was buying a Staples brand and we had issues with corruption. But you are using Kingston, not sure what to say, that should be a good one. Try Lexar or Verbatim. Or as Little Ghost brought up, possibly you have issues with the power from your USB ports?

"If you cannot afford to lose them, you're not saving anything by using anything less than the most reliable backup mechanism you can reasonably afford. It's just not worth it."

And the most reliable media for backup and long-term storage is still the venerable Tape Drive. Keep the tapes away from strong magnetic fields and they'll last decades, perhaps even centuries (In theory, we haven't had the magnetic tape medium around long enough for a full 100 year data storage test).

If it is important use an archival DVD. They're available in 100GB.

You get what you pay for with a flash drive. These are being used today in internet server applications, but the lowest quality is still very low. Individual cells in a flash drive fail on a regular basis. This failure rate is quality dependent. What is also quality dependent are the algorithms used to detect and fix/replace failed cells. A third quality factor is the number of spare cells available for the device to swap in for failed cells. Flash drive capacities are typically much larger than the advertised number when new. In commercially available units, the drive is programmed to fail when the real capacity dips below the advertised capacity.

1) basic quality 2)algorithm capability 3 initial capacity.

I have flash drives that are 14 years old and function fine. I have some that failed within a few years. The difference? The very old ones were written to once and left as storage. The failed ones are regularly written to, files deleted, and re-written to. That is the source of failure for flash drives. That is what you are doing as well. They are apparently just meant for storage.

Is there any difference between longevity with SD cards and thumb drives?

Since they use the same type of memory, there shouldn't be much difference.

Now I am starting to worry about my laptop (has no hard disk, just solid-state memory). Is that going to go bonkers on me too?

The MTBF for a flash drive can be better than any hard drive. Its all about initial quality.

I've had a solid-state drive in my computer for six years now and not had a single problem with it.

Wow! Great point! I have both a 2012 and a 2015 MacBook Pro with Solid-state drives, and have never been aware of a memory problem in either. I can't really say that the 2012 unit has had 5 years of continuous use, because the 2015 version replaced the 2012 one as my principal working unit, and also because I upgraded the memory in the 2012 unit a few months back, so the original memory is now a backup, rarely used.

My boss had to buy the 2015 unit because he was responsible for getting the 2012 unit's keyboard wet. After replacing the keyboard, the 2012 unit worked again, but the new one had already been purchased...

I keep the older one updated as a clone of the newer one every couple of weeks, so in case something should happen to one, I can immediately switch to the other. The couple of weeks' data would come from my more frequent eternal drive backups...

"The couple of weeks' data would come from my more frequent eternal drive backups..."

Yes, it does seem like the world of IT is always about being eternally in the state of backing up data.

(The missing x in external was just too good to pass up.)

They might be using a different style of memory chip for the SSHD's, however, as with any data storage medium, it never hurts to have regular backups.

Very good - the detail on why, not just the warning.

I've had a new one for sale on eBay for 6 months.

And that's relevant to this conversation how?

Take your advertising to another thread, AP#1

You've had a new one of what on sale? A new Flash drive? The prices of Flash Drives (also known as Thumb Drives, USB Memory Sticks, and a bunch of other names) has been falling so fast that one that is 6 months old has lost half it's value. Give it to a friend!

I'd never trust a flash drive purchased on eBay!

Would you buy a jump drive on eBay and plug it in your computer? Or use ones given away as promotional items when you have no idea what might be on them? USB drives are hackers' new best friend.