Will USB thumb drive wear out fast?

[krishna.murphy]

First of all, I really enjoy Knoppix 6.2.1. It's the first Knoppix I've used, but it's much better than Windows. I installed to 8GB USB thumb drive, and also have persistent image (aes) on it as well. However, I'm not sure how much of a toll it's taking on the life cycle of the thumb drive. Should I be concerned? Is there a way to control how often Knoppix writes data to the thumb drive?

Hey, Wojo-

I use the same setup, and had similar concern. After checking around, I found a report on flash that said tests showed that name-brand flash memory lasted much longer than the guaranteed 10,000 write cycles. Also, there is wear-leveling built in to make it last longer (less wear on any given cell => less likely to stop working anytime soon.)

Cheers!
Krishna