I’m thinking about getting one for several purposes, primarily for portable software, some certificates and keys, and a few backups. Since it won’t be powered off for more than a few days or weeks and won’t experience heavy writing (although I plan to use Veracrypt and that may cause some stress)
How long can I expect it to last? Obviously there will be backups, but I also don’t want to lose anything on it as much as possible.
USB sticks are a consumable, they should not be treated as anything but temporary storage.
I would look into an external SSD instead.
This is my professional opinion as an IT technician.
Did you see a lot of hardware failures among USB sticks as an IT technician or what makes you have this professional opinion?
Presuming that OP doesn’t lose their backup drive constantly the way that I do USB sticks. I’d probably take better care if it actually mattered
I have had several USB sticks that have corrupted files in my work, so many that I have simply accepted that USB sticks should be avoided for any kind of long term data storage.