Depends a lot on the quality of the stick. I have some that have worked well for years, and had others that failed after just a few writes. You’ll probably be fine, but probably isn’t good enough for a critical backup.
Yeah I’d definitely agree with not using them for critical backups. I think they’re generally fine as long as they’re never holding your only copy of something, but then I’d probably say that about every kind of drive…
I wouldn’t even say that. Flash drives are good as temporary storage for copying/sharing files, or for stuff you need on hand (like a Linux boot stick), but I’d never include them as part of a backup system.
you don’t need the whole usb drive to fail. It’s enough if a sector or two went corrupt, and you won’t be able to open (or even see) a directory, or copying a file will stop in the middle. maybe files disappear too, and then at best they get recovered to FOUND.001 or such directory without path and name, maybe also just partially, or interleaved with other lost or deleted files’ fragments
Out of interest how high is “fairly high”? I don’t think I’ve ever had a USB flash drive fail!
Depends a lot on the quality of the stick. I have some that have worked well for years, and had others that failed after just a few writes. You’ll probably be fine, but probably isn’t good enough for a critical backup.
Yeah I’d definitely agree with not using them for critical backups. I think they’re generally fine as long as they’re never holding your only copy of something, but then I’d probably say that about every kind of drive…
I wouldn’t even say that. Flash drives are good as temporary storage for copying/sharing files, or for stuff you need on hand (like a Linux boot stick), but I’d never include them as part of a backup system.
you don’t need the whole usb drive to fail. It’s enough if a sector or two went corrupt, and you won’t be able to open (or even see) a directory, or copying a file will stop in the middle. maybe files disappear too, and then at best they get recovered to FOUND.001 or such directory without path and name, maybe also just partially, or interleaved with other lost or deleted files’ fragments
Maybe I have had failures and haven’t even noticed!