Why it's important to backup data saved on your older thumb drives

Transferring important files to a thumb drive is brilliant for portability, but not always great for longevity. Damage, loss and corruption are all factors worth considering. Perhaps it's just anecdotal, but USB thumb drives don't seem as popular as they used to be. That would make sense, since they've been rendered unimportant or obsolete for many of the tasks they were built for. Technologies like email, chat and Air Drop make transferring small files a breeze. Larger files are often better stashed and shared using online services like iCloud, or else full-size external SSDs.

You may well be keeping some files on thumb drives, whether because they make sense for your lifestyle, or you're just clinging to media from a decade or two ago. And why wouldn't you? There's nothing more portable than a tiny USB stick. There's also no sense buying extra storage if you don't have to, certainly not with memory prices shooting into the stratosphere. If you haven't already, though, it's time to create backups for those old thumbies. Their time is running out, either because of the odds of a disaster or the inevitable consequences of their design. You should even consider migrating away from them entirely.

Anything as small as a thumb drive is at high risk of destruction or going missing. You might leave one at the office, or accidentally catapult it out of your bag as you race to catch a plane. And if you move frequently enough, some possessions can seemingly vanish into the ether. Even without those concerns, there's a ticking clock. All flash storage has a finite number of write cycles, usually somewhere in between 10,000 and 100,000 for a thumb stick. This isn't much of a problem if you only use a drive for archival storage. If you're copying files daily or weekly, however, you're gradually reducing the amount of usable space, until one day the drive won't work at all. With thumb drives, you can't even run TRIM commands to recover some of that room, as you can on regular SSDs.

Adding to this is a less consistent threat known as bit rot. To represent data, flash memory depends on cells holding an electrical charge. Over time, those cells will lose electrons, which may eventually result in flipped bits. That translates into data corruption. Bits can even be flipped by cosmic rays, although the odds are relatively low — about one per gigabyte per month, at least at sea level. Bit rot is likely the least of your worries, yet on a long enough timeline, rare events become a certainty. It's also worth remembering that while thumb drives don't have any moving parts, they still rely on components like connectors and controller chips. These can fail for various reasons, such as impacts, corrosion or shoddy manufacturing. A drive stored in an especially humid environment could be contaminated with mold. How should you backup old thumb drives? If data is truly important, the common rule of thumb (no pun intended) is known as 3-2-1. That is, data should be saved to at least three places: two local drives and one cloud upload. Some people go a step further, making sure one of those drives is at a separate address or in a fireproof safe. That's probably overkill for the average person, yet fires, floods and other disasters do happen. In any event, you don't want to be entirely dependent on the cloud.

将重要文件传输到U盘对于便携性来说非常方便，但并不总是有利于长期保存。损坏、丢失和数据损坏都是值得考虑的因素。也许这只是个人经验之谈，但U盘似乎不像以前那么受欢迎了。这是有道理的，因为它们在许多原本设计的用途中已经变得不重要或过时。电子邮件、聊天和AirDrop等技术使传输小文件变得轻而易举。较大的文件通常最好使用iCloud等在线服务或全尺寸外置SSD来存储和共享。

你可能仍然将一些文件保存在U盘上，无论它们是否适合你的生活方式，还是你只是 clinging to 来自十年或二十年前的媒体。为什么不呢？没有比微型USB闪存盘更便携的东西了。如果你不需要，也没有理由购买额外的存储空间，尤其是在内存价格飙升到平流层的情况下。不过，如果你还没有，现在是为这些旧U盘创建备份的时候了。它们的寿命即将耗尽，这要么是因为灾难发生的概率，要么是其设计不可避免的后果。你甚至应该考虑完全迁移到其他存储介质。

任何像U盘这样小的物品都极易被毁坏或丢失。你可能会把它忘在办公室，或者在赶飞机时不小心把它从包里甩出去。如果你经常搬家，一些物品似乎会凭空消失。即使没有这些担忧，也存在一个倒计时。所有闪存存储都有有限的写入次数，通常在10,000到100,000次之间，对于U盘来说尤其如此。如果你只将驱动器用于归档存储，这并不是一个大问题。但是，如果你每天或每周复制文件，你就是在逐渐减少可用空间，直到有一天驱动器完全无法工作。对于U盘，你甚至无法像普通SSD那样运行TRIM命令来恢复部分空间。

还有一个更不稳定的威胁，称为位衰减。为了表示数据，闪存依赖于存储电荷的单元。随着时间的推移，这些单元会失去电子，这最终可能导致位翻转。这会导致数据损坏。位甚至可能被宇宙射线翻转，尽管概率相对较低——大约每GB每月一次，至少在海平面。位衰减可能不是你最担心的问题，但在足够长的时间线上，罕见事件会变成必然。还值得记住的是，虽然U盘没有移动部件，但它们仍然依赖于连接器和控制器芯片等组件。这些组件可能因各种原因发生故障，例如冲击、腐蚀或制造缺陷。在特别潮湿的环境中存储的驱动器可能会被霉菌污染。如何备份旧U盘？如果数据确实重要，常见的经验法则（双关语）被称为3-2-1。也就是说，数据应该保存在至少三个地方：两个本地驱动器和一次云端上传。有些人更进一步，确保其中一个驱动器位于单独的地址或防火保险箱中。这对普通人来说可能有些过度，但火灾、洪水和其他灾难确实会发生。无论如何，你不想完全依赖云端。