Over the past year or so, I have had an alarmingly high number of USB flash drives fail into "read only" mode. Something like six or more. These varied from cheap Chinese eBay stuff to name brands pretty much equally. So, I got to thinking: How many have failed on me over the last decade or so. Practically none that I can recall. What has changed in manufacture or design that might account for this or is it just coincidental.
I did a search using Startpage, and Duck Duck Go, and didn't find anything that might validate my observations. Please tell me, am I imagining this or is it a real phenomenon? Have any of you noticed increased failure rates of USB flash drives.
There is a motivation to try to get users to migrate from external storage to the cloud. I'm not comfortable with that. I'm strictly VFR. No clouds, low, and slow.
Thanks for any insights you might choose to offer.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 31 2019, @03:09AM
Flash drives have gotten so cheap that they have to be sacrificing quality somewhere in the manufacturing process. Perhaps flash memory that didn't meet the standards for SSDs are being sold to flash drive makers.
They may get to the point that they are like appliances are today. Appliances used to be made to last, but these days you're lucky if they last a few years. The shorter the warranty the lower the quality.