How long will

[ripper101]

How long will a regular flash drive hold data on it? forever or degrade over time or something?

[DarkEnergy]

1 minute ago, ripper101 said:

How long will a regular flash drive hold data on it? forever or degrade over time or something?

10 years maybe. It will end up losing data. 

[Cla55ifi3xd]

Nothing lasts forever but should be good for a good long while. 

[Daniel644]

Depends on how much you use it, I got about 5 years out of the Kingston one that just died on me when I was transferring over to my new flash drive.

[ARikozuM]

21 minutes ago, ripper101 said:

How long will a regular flash drive hold data on it? forever or degrade over time or something?

Unlike HDD's, flash drives do lose their information after periods of non-function.

[Daniel644]

1 minute ago, wrathoftheturkey said:

Dude... do you get hit by lightning a lot?

I keep it on me in my pocket at all times as I keep several program installers on it that I might need for servicing a computer at a moments notice, they wear out pretty easily, the last one before that one had to be plugged in "just right" for like the last year before I swapped it out and the one before that predated the 1GB models.

[ARikozuM]

Just now, wrathoftheturkey said:

So do SSDs actually, they can just go longer

Sorry, it should be HDD. Magnetic media doesn't generally start to degrade for much longer. Thanks for the correction.