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I have a flash drive that is several years old and I am always careful to click on the "safe removal" thingy at the bottom right corner of the screen before taking it out, but now when I dig deep into the labyrinth of folders I come across pictures that have like white lines across them and are basically corrupt, as well as text that had letters exchanged for strange symbols. So do these types of things just happen naturally, in accordance with the 2nd law of thermodynamics, or am I missing out on something here / doing something wrong?

Do I just have to put my files on a stationary computer just in case the files on the USB get corrupted so I can replace them, or is there a way I can be sure that they will be safe on the USB?

Daniel
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    Though not a duplicate, I would refer you to my answer to this - http://superuser.com/questions/854588/fix-sd-card-that-cannot-be-formatted - the same applies to any flash-based storage medium; they suffer either slow degradation or catastrophic failure & are *really* not recommended for long-term storage. The modern paradigm is, "Any data not stored in at least three distinct locations ought to be considered temporary." which would say that just one stationary computer is two too few; one local backup & also one online backup if you really want your data to survive long-term. – Tetsujin Oct 16 '16 at 18:11

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Flash chips are not permanent storage, sounds like you are being bitten by Data degradation.

Some of the "1"s are slowly fading back to "0"s. In images, it could cause a section of a picture to fail CRC checks and just break. In text, a stray bit entirely change the character it is.

Uberfuzzy
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  • Why does this not happen on computers, don't they also use binary? – Daniel Oct 16 '16 at 03:14
  • (Spinning) Hard drives have checks in the controller boards to catch these on the fly and fix, and magnetic has different rot properties. SSD storage, which largely is just a bunch of flash chips in a box, also has error detection and correction abilities. Also, because they are powered by the computer probably hold charges longer vs a chip unpowered in your pocket where things fade. – Uberfuzzy Oct 16 '16 at 03:18