nospam wrote:
In article , Andy Burns
wrote:

Do these thumb drives last forever
No, like anything with flash storage, they have a limited number of
writes, and unlike an SSD they tend not to have wear levelling, so
'write hotspots' will wear out faster.

other than the crappy ones, it's longer than anyone can realistically
reach. you'd have to hammer it hard to burn it out.

The only ones I've lost, are ones I verified used TLC chips.
Both were 32GB sticks. And with only a small amount of writes
to them.

So if you were measuring "risk factors", at least some
of the older ones could last longer. Because they use
SLC or MLC. TLC only has about 3000-3500 writes in it.
My 32GB sticks died in about a year of usage. There's
no sign in the controller datasheet, of any mention of
wear leveling. There are patents on wear leveling, which
are likely too expensive to license. The controller in
mine, has an 8051 microcontroller, so there is certainly
sufficient facilities to write "complex" code if the
price was right.

Paul