5mo ago

How long does a decent USB stick last?

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.

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How long does a decent USB stick last?
Until you store indecent stuff on it.

4GB
The first usb stick I bought more than 15 years ago, still works.
- 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.
  
  At least me ZIP drives has 100 megabytes of storage 😎
- The very first USB stick I bought was 32MB and I thought that was a lot cause it held way more than a floppy.
  
  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.
  
  In 2000 or so a 1GB stick was $999 at Tiger Direct. Who could use a whole gig?!
- I had one that looks exactly the same but a green accent color instead of purple! Only 1 gig haha
- I have this exact same USB drive, 4GB also bought around 15 years ago it still works like a charm

I've had some for 10 years+.

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

I tried several random cheap sticks recently and they all died within a year.
A funny story: In my second grade at school, I got gifted a 4gb stick for winning something related to IT, it was around 2009. It worked all this time as a distro stick, until my PC couldn't see it anymore. I thought it died, but I tried it a year after and it magically works again now
- Maybe some soldering got loose

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.

The secret nerd technique they don't want you to know is to get a big usb stick housing for a proper m.2 SSD stick. Form wise its a slightly chunkier usb stick. Inside is a proper drive you can buy from a reputable source with terrabytes of storage and 3.0 speeds. A reputable SSD drive will easily last a decade.
As far as store bought regular old sandisk will last a long long time.
- Really wish that's an option since I have m.2 lying around but it's not really pocket edc material.
  
  https://www.amazon.com/ELUTENG-Enclosure-Protocol-Adapter-External/dp/B08H22BV1N There are dozens like this in all sorts of tech stores. Definitely bigger than a usb driver but not THAT much bigger

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.

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

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.

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

I still use one I bought in 2007.

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.

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

I have some 1gb sticks that are about to turn 20 years old.

I have seen only a single usb stick die
It was a 2GB one bought a very long time ago

It's pretty random.
Carried a LaCie IAmAKey on my keychain for 10 years before it died. Probably used it a dozen times.

Really depends. what manufacturer, price, how often they're used and type (type A, type C, micro USB, etc). I've had some still work after a decade, others have suddenly failed months after I bought them

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?
  
  I read it as occasional use on any os. If you have a Raspberry Pi running 24/7 and it's constantly whacking that memory stick with read / writes it's going to die faster than the USB stick you use to install Linux twice a year
  
  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

I can't say what is the usual failure rate as my drives fail in like 3 months or years but dont buy kingston datatravel 3.0 both died in a month and one of the replacements died in one month, and the second one is still going. They were used to transfer some files beetween computers and as ventoy drives for when windows breaks or I break my current distro.

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.

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