The lifespan of data on a USB flash drive depends on many factors: Under ideal conditions, data should remain preserved on a high quality USB stick for at least 10 years or even longer. But what exactly does that mean and under what conditions does this hold true? USB sticks or flash drives store data using NAND flash memory, in the form of binary values zeros and ones in memory cells. Interestingly, it is electrons trapped in a kind of “floating gate” that represent these values....
