The Sisyphus Comments

When Will Your Thumb Drive Bite The Dust?

It is difficult to put an exact time expectation on the life of a thumb (flash) drive but, like any other media, they won’t last forever. The best tip I can give you is to back up the data on your thumb drive regularly.  I back mine periodically to my 30 gid iPod.  Just create a “Thumb Driver” folder on your computer’s hard drive or an external drive.  Inside the folder that you created, create a second folder and name it for the date “050606“, then copy the contents of your drive into the dated folder.  Each time you back up, just create another dated folder.

For those of you who don’t backup regularly, the good news is thumb drives may last longer than other types of media. Some manufacturers say that the flash cells are good for anywhere between 100,000 and a million write cycles. You will probably lose the drive before you wear it out.  However, as my son found out when his Iomega flash drive dumped his data, nothing is certain.

Some manufacturers claim these flash drives will last up to 10 years but I wouldn’t take that to bank. If you replace them about every five years, you are probably in the safe zone.  Of course, keep in mind that your hard drive will probably crap out in 3 – 5 years and you can’t depend on CDs or DVDs to last even that long.