Flash drives have a definite lifetime that must be considered if you are using flash drives to store valuable information, such as photos.
The basic "rule of thumb" is that a flash drive cell will last about 10,000 changes/uses.
If you are using a flash drive for pictures and just "add" pictures, then the drive should last a very long time. Nevertheless, back up the contents on occasion to a DVD or CD.
At the other extreme, if you use a flash drive for Readyboost (see another post for this), then cells can be expected to change quite often. Perhaps a cell will change 100 times a day. Then 10K/100 is 100- you can expect some odd computer performance about 100 days after you start using a flash drive for Readyboost.
This is just an estimate, of course... there's all the caveats. Microsoft claims that flash drives will last 10 years. I worked in computer manufacturing at IBM for 25 years. This seems to me to be a typical mis-statement by someone who is only a software engineer. Flash drives and all other computer equipment have a finite lifetime of about 10 years, as a rule of thumb. This is because the are made from plastic and other materials that become brittle- they literally evaporate over time.
So if you use a flash drive and make a lot of changes to the data, keep the lifetime limitation in mind.
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