this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2025
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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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[–] GreyShuck@feddit.uk 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] DrDystopia@lemy.lol 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] GreyShuck@feddit.uk 5 points 2 days ago

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.