a rare problem that resulted in a dead usb flash drive
I had a "rugged" flash drive, but mine is dead to the world.
I've only seen a flash drive have real-deal hardware failure once before what I'm about to describe. Years ago I had a 512MB (yes, megabyte) SanDisk cruzer, and beat the crap out of that thing. One day, it started rejecting any attempt to write data to it. That's a telltale sign that flash drive has reached the end of its useful life, so yep, stick a fork in it, it's done. Chucked it.
The way this rugged drive failed however... this was not only way different in the way it failed, but rare.
I said recently that Windows 10 will be dead in October. Although my primary computer runs Linux, I do keep a separate Windows laptop for "runs only on Windows" specific stuff. It runs Windows 10. Or rather, it used to. Now it runs Windows 11. It's a bone stock install with the latest version. Thankfully, Win11 doesn't suck as much as it did a year ago.
Did you know Windows 10 was originally released July 29, 2015? At the time I write this, that was nine-and-a-half years ago. And if you didn't know, Microsoft's official end-of-support date for Win10 is October 14, 2025.
This does make me wonder if there will be a repeat of what happened to WinXP users when Win7 was released.
