Hi Angel, 

Some quick Googling about didn't turn up anything about best practices for
storage. So I'd imagine that if you adhere to the "usual suspects" - not too
hot or cold, not too humid, don't play hockey with them in the data center,
etc., flash drives will last long enough - which I define as "until the data
on them cannot be read due to software incompatibility." 

Most of the stats I saw indicated a shelf life of 1 million write cycles,
which VERY roughly translates to about 10 years or so of active usage. So if
you're looking for storage for decades, this wouldn't be it - but then
again, neither would anything else for born-digital records because of the
software compatibility issues associated with reading the actual files on
the drive. 

The best bet for any long-term storage of digital information is to pick
high-quality media of whatever type fits your budget and operational
requirements (magnetic disk, flash drive, solid state disk, optical disc)
and then to be prepared to migrate every 5-10 years to new media and
especially new file formats. You can also mitigate this by selecting
standard file formats like TIFF or JPG for images; text, HTML, XML, or one
of the standardized PDF formats (PDF/A or ISO 32000 PDF) for text; DXF for
CAD; etc.

Respectfully submitted on behalf of myself and no other company,
organization, association, entity, or board of directors,

Jesse Wilkins, CRM
[log in to unmask] 
(303) 574-0749 direct
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/jessewilkins 

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