I posted a question yesterday in the Firefox forum, and part of one of the answers I received surprised me--that thumb drives have a useful life. Yeah, I know I'm not tech savvy...
Is there a way to estimate how much longer a Thumb Drive will live? Can an app like this be developed? I think it would be handy; I'm worried about unexpectedly losing all my information.
Thanks, everyone. You're a helpful bunch.
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It's best to search first, as drive live has been addressed many times. As has been discussed previously, drive life varies widely between drives depending on what the RAM type is, etc. And the lives are expressed in terms of writes. But with load balancers (which most new drives have), the writes are spread, so even if you write a lot, you're not writing over and over to a given area. Everything flash-based has a lifespan (usb flash drives, compact flash/SD/memory sticks, iPod Nanos, other MP3 players, cell phones, Palm and Pocket PC PDAs, etc). The fact that they have a given lifespan is just the way things are. And there's NO way at all to predict when they will fail, though you're usually looking at years in the future.
So, buy a good one (the better ones have a lifetime warranty), back it up regularly, and use it as you'd like.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!