Hacker News Reader

Also, in my anecdotal experience, the most common failure mode of an USB stick seems to be going completely dead without any prior warning. So regular backups, definitely.

View on HN

Yeah that sucks. I did read that the constant/read write does decrease life, maybe that was specific to SD cards but probably applies to USB as well.

I don't know... one of those things where you think too much about it... like what about general consumers with a password on their Windows/Mac computer... is that "secure"? I don't know.

You could potentially access that hard drive by taking it apart assuming it wasn't a soldered on storage device.

All flash-based memory devices have a limited number of write/erase cycles. Internal flash memories have more sophisticated strategies to extend memory life but they all rely on having spare memory available. Try not to go past 80% usage.

Thanks for the tip. Probably should have bought a larger USB 3.0 than 32GB, the Ultra Fits are nice by San Disk checked read/write pretty good (have numbers if needed)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com