Flash memory (USB key, SD card, SSD disk)
Everyone has been tempted to store the photos of their last vacation on a USB key, or even directly on the SD card of your camera. Maybe you still have one in your pocket or purse. It’s practical, it doesn’t take up much space, and you can carry it everywhere with you.
But is this storage medium reliable? Not really. Flash memory media have a definite lifespan which depends on the number of write cycles. This can vary from a few months to ten years, depending on the quality of the support and the use made of it. A cheap USB key will naturally be less reliable than a reputable brand SSD for example.
“It’s normal to have the impression that USB keys snap faster than other flash memories, explain the digital. On the one hand because we abuse them by savagely removing them from computers, on the other hand because many of them are equipped with the most economical, slowest and most unreliable type of memory over time, and they do not benefit from the write optimizations of their SSD cousins.”
Taking all these parameters into account, we cannot advise you to use a USB key, or even an SSD, for very long-term archiving. The interest of these memories is their speed of transfer and their practical aspect, but not their longevity. The price/capacity ratio of SSDs also does not work in their favor when compared to their big brothers, platter hard drives.