I have a Patriot Rage USB 256gb and I installed Linux Mint fully on it. How long will I get out of the USB before it dies? I know it wouldn't last like an HDD or SSD. Just trying to get a ballpark figure if that's possible? thanks
I have the 512GB Supersonic Rage 2 USB 3.1 for over 2yrs. Used as storage & media played from. I load & delete 1-4GB of files everyday. I don't want jinx myself but this is best USB drive I've had. PS I'm waiting for a 1TB or bigger version. When the price goes below $100 I'll buy if I have the money for sure.
Any answer would be pure speculation. I've yet to have a USB Flash drive fail, but I don't run Linux from any of them on a daily basis. I suspect you would get a while out of it. But quality can vary greatly and fakes are common.
There is no way to answer that. There are just too many variables. There is nothing to suggest you could not save some important files to the device, then lock it up in a safe deposit box for 30 years and come back and all is good. Or you could save your important files today, and try to read them tomorrow and they would be totally corrupt. Or you could save your files, pull the device and accidently drop it to the hard floor or zap it with a static discharge and it would not work. Or you could read and write files 1000s of times and it works perfectly each time. The most important thing to remember is to always - as in EVERY SINGLE TIME - ensure you have multiple copies of any file you don't want lost.
While I have no personal experience with this (maybe Bill or someone else can chime in), I post this for the sake of discussion - There are different grades of UFDs (A, B, C...). Customer/industrial/professional to put it colloquially. They will differ in shock and temperature resistance, firmware algorithms (error handling), type of NAND storage, the way they handle power interruptions, warranty/support etc. But I can generally agree that the life expectancy would be unpredictable for any of these grades regardless of the specification.
That's good to know. I know it's impossible to know how long it would last running Linux daily on it. It was just a general question. I know it wouldn't last like a nvme or ssd.
Flash-based UFDs have the same basic limitations as SSDs... but in most cases do not contain the algorithms needed to extend their life (garbage collection, OS-supported TRIM, etc) like SSDs support. As a result, they will eventually degrade due to write amplification of the NAND blocks. When that happens, device write operations will slow down immensely and eventually cease all together. At that time the device becomes a read-only memory... running at full speed if that helps any
