Can a USB thumbdrive "wear out"?

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Yap...it can be quite headache with Thumb drive. I can see my files in the USB drive,but when I try to open or copy them out to another drive, it could not.
I could not even defrag it. any solution?

I would think that in normal operation users would be more apt to lose their data in a laundry cycle than write as many times as needed. Backing up these devices is sage advice, but there isn't a need to throw them out (unless it is with the wash!)
Heck, Microsoft even encourages the use of USB Flash memory as extended RAM/pagefile in Vista.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/features/details/readyboost.mspx

Like the previous poster Vista's ready boost system has always worried me from the point of view of wearing out the USB flash drive. I always believed that USB memory sticks had a limited read-write duty cycle and presumably using readyboost means that data is being written to and from the drive at a very high frequency?

We really need to get someone from the flash drive industry to comment on this as increasingly we seem to be heading for solid state disk drives like the optional one in the Mac Air. If these drives are comprised of the same flash memory as USB sticks then presumably they have a limited life span that may be much less than the equivalent hard disk.

Don't get me wrong I want solid state technology as it peeeves me that in the year 2008 we are still using storage that has to spin at 7500 rpm or faster and they are the cause of so much noise, heat and power consumption. Flash drives are better in every respect ... except perhaps one??

Twice I have killed thumb drives when using them to move data from a MAC to a PC. MAC USB devices are not hot-swappable and if you forget to "eject" the device it can not only destroy data but render the device forever unusable. Neither the MAC or the PC now recognizes the existence of the drive(s).

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Everyone uses ReadyBoost as some kind of counter example,
and it's not.

Regardless of the terminology used, ReadyBoost is NOT,
repeat NOT a paging file in the traditional sense. It's much
more like a dynamically tuned pre-load cache, where Windows
can *read* things from quickly as much as it needs to.
Readyboost does NOT *write* to fash ram excessively - it
only updates that pre-load cache on a kind of as-needed
basis.

I've heard of one person actually putting their real Windows
swapfile onto flash memory. It lasted about two days before
the flash drive died. And yes, died as in throw it away
dead.

I stand by my statement: flash memory wears out. It's
getting better, lifespans are increasing, technologies are
being developed to avoid wearing it out any sooner than it
has to, but the bottom line is that writing to flash memory
wears it out. The more you write, the shorter the lifespan,
as simple as that.

Leo

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1. The person who could write to subdirectories but not the root - maybe your root directory is full; try (moving everything out of and then) deleting a directory. There's a finite number of entries allowed in the root in many filing systems.

2. Hard disc bits fail too! It would be interesting to hear some how-many-writes figures for them (and maybe other technologies - ISTR CDRWs aren't very high), to companre with the 10k-100k that seems to be being bandied about for flash.

A quick search reveals that SLC flash has 100000 and MLC flash has 10000.

There is almost NO need to worry about wearing modern flash memory out.

If I format and rewrite the ENTIRE flash disk twice a day, it'll last for more than 13 years with a cheap (read, common) MLC USB flash disk.

In any case, USB flash disks ensure that the wear is even, not concentrated. So it's not 10,000 writes; it's much, much less dramatic.

Use your USB as much as you like; it will be obselete before it is ruined.

Comment and questions. Well, everything dies eventually. For flash drives, other factors may present risks, too. I have lost all info few times just because I did not have patience to wait until XP would allow to EJECT/ disconnect USB drive from USB port. That I believe would be the major cause for failure - but drives would work after re-formatting; some recovery software would even let me save some files. I carry my drives with my keys in the pocket of my pants - such a location where they are exposed to mechanical impacts, heat, cold, moisture, electric and magnetic fields from different, at times very powerful sources; you bet this can be damaging, too. [And I've found that data can be lost even from recorded CD-R(W)s or DVD-R(W)s, if the media is not very high quality or not fully compatible; if recording speed or conditions are not good...]
Any technology is imperfect; I try to backup my USB drive onto an external USB or eSATA drive and on recordable/rewritable media, mostly DVD+-R as they are cheap now. And I try to be wise, prepared and "anxious for nothing".
MY QUESTION WOULD BE – what about SD cards, how do they measure up, compared to flash drives? Why they are called “Secure Digital” cards? Are they any better than flash drives etc, reliability wise? What removable media is the best in this sense? And how to know what they sell, how many rewrites that media will sustain? Shouldn’t they inform customers about all that? Thanks and best wishes = Nicholas

J. P. Gilliver is not completely right, as he forgot the point that live database usage can do thousands of writes in one day.

Here is a more important question: Do flash drives manage bad blocks like modern disk drives? If not, they are getting large enough that they probably will start to support SMART testing.

this is just shocking, now i know the reason why my flash drive get many serious problems, when i put the flash drive connected to the computer, i just open my drive and directly run my applications stored in the flash, since the application writes and updates the data in my flash, that's the problem, i had just ran out of write limit of the flash drive, you know, it has so many bad sectors today, i bought last year, yeah, you're right, why don't we just take out a large data storage for more safe and secure data to bring, ready to make a space for a hard drive in my bag, lol, thank you, this is open-minding for a amateur programmer like me

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