You're not imagining things – USB memory sticks are getting worse

It suspects that flash chips from manufacturers such as SK hynix, Sandisk or Samsung that fail quality control checks are being resold into the market, but marked as components with lower memory capacities.

Heinicke said that many of the USB sticks actually contained microSD cards that had been mounted onto the circuit board and were being managed by an external controller chip. While USB sticks like this were mostly promotional gifts, he said, there were also branded products among them, adding:"You shouldn't rely too much on the reliability of flash memory."

This path was chosen by the NAND flash manufacturers because it delivers greater storage density, which means higher capacity drives and lower costs per GB. But it also has implications for the endurance, or longevity of the cells. In other words, the cells wear out faster the more bits they are used to store."The downside of success in increasing storage density: writability and storage capacity decrease," he wrote.

He posted a few tips for flash users. If you frequently write and delete data on USB sticks, such as when using them as backup devices, for example, you should use several sticks in rotation.

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