Do you often store documents to transfer from work to home or share with other people on a USB flash drive? What about those photos you're bringing to your local drug store chain for printing? Many people also use USB flash drives for back-up storage. Often, the data we keep on USB drives is also stored on laptop or desktop PCs -- but not always.  For whatever reason, you may  be storing one of a kind data on your USB flash drive, and its often important documents and photos. Otherwise, you wouldn't be carrying it around on such a convenient, portable, easy-to-access data solution.  But those very features that make flash drives so convenient are also their downfall.  USB flash drives use solid state storage memory for storage. SSD storage is more reliable than hard drives and not as prone to physical hard drive failure after so many read/write cycles. But USB drives can still be damaged by:

The solid state technology inside USB flash drives is more durable and less prone to fail after repeated read/write cycles. After all, there are no mechanical parts inside, like the heads on an HDD, to wear out with time. But because of their size and format, USB drives are also more prone catastrophic failure and data loss caused by a number of other factors.  Here are 3 ways to protect your USB flash drive and avoid the need for USB flash drive data recovery services:  1. Keep your flash drive unplugged when not in use. When plugged into your computer, your flash drive is subject to additional (unnecessary) read/write cycles. These cycles eventually wear out the SSD memory chip inside -- although not as quickly as with a conventional HDD.  2. Don't run applications off the drive, for the same reason.