How Long Do USB Thumb Drives Live?

Had my first USB thumb drive (sometimes called USB flash drives, or USB key drives) die on me today.

They're a great way to move stuff from A to B, and to keep an extra back-up in your pocket, but don't rely on them too much. I've had several over the years (they first started appearing in this part of the world in 1999, if I recall) and this is the first time one has just refused to give up its secrets.

It's not a well-known brand, but I guess it's true of all these devices, which use flash memory to store up to half a gigabyte of stuff. I've read they live for "up to one million rewrites and can retain data for up to 10 years". Not in this case they don't. This one hadn't been much further than my pocket for the past couple of years, and my pocket hasn't been anywhere exciting since the Great Drinking Session of 1996.

My advice: Don't treat them as any more substantial than floppy disks. Keep them for moving stuff from one computer to another, or as a second back-up (after hard drives, online backup and/or CD-Rs). Assume that you could lose the data, and plan accordingly. They're wonderful little gadgets, but I just realised they're not the trusty friend I thought they were.