I’m thinking about getting one for several purposes, primarily for portable software, some certificates and keys, and a few backups. Since it won’t be powered off for more than a few days or weeks and won’t experience heavy writing (although I plan to use Veracrypt and that may cause some stress)
How long can I expect it to last? Obviously there will be backups, but I also don’t want to lose anything on it as much as possible.
Buy one with square USB on one end, USB-C on the other, then if one fails you still have the other interface. The more reputable companies are better in this market. $17 should get you 128gb here
Not knocking cause I have one of these myself, but if a drive fails, isn’t it more likely because of the flash storage instead of the USB interface?
Depends how much you use it. I work in IT and plug my thumb drive in multiple times per day. In the past, most of my failures have been physical failures where the drive and the USB connection physically separate, or the USB connector just breaks. I have rarely encountered flash storage failures but I don’t just put them in drawers for years, they get used a lot.