Flash Drive? Careful!!

You can screw up a flash-drive with multiple read/write cycles, too:

"Like mechanical disks, flash disks have their own technical limitations, so it will be wise to measure the fragmentation level on flash disks in order to avoid unnecessary writes on the media," he added.

Just as troublesome:

USB flash memory drives are experiencing an increase in product failures as a result of quality-control problems,

Upshot? Looks like the advice is to go with the higher-priced drive AND a small, rather than large, one. Buy a couple rather than trying to R/W the first one to death. It WILL die.