I've been using unraid since the 4.xxx days, maybe before. Somewhere around 2010, 2011 maybe? Maybe longer, actually. My very first USB thumb boot drive lasted for over a decade, maybe 13-14 years. I have now replaced the USB drive three times in the last 12 months, and the most recent one just died again yesterday.

Is there something going on with USB disks these days? Do they just not make them like they used to? is anyone else plagued with continuously failing USB boot drives and the headache that comes with?

Thanks.

MTF and general material access for USB disk manufactures.... Yes we have smaller san flash, but he SOC and chips burn through their eprom lines. Similar to the OG lightbulbs laster years to new current gen may last a month. Its also depends on the constant read and writes. I've gone through a good 10 drive between 3 license and only 1 system that has been on a single drive per my info and memory. limetech back ends should see the license chages...

Theres a PSA that goes over this a bit. I haven't had issues with Unraid USB on BestBuy PNY drives. I tend to get a 5 pack of 8GB or 16 GB.
The last good usb I had that I use with Unraid is the sandisk Cruzer series, but hteres a PSA here due to some manfacutres and clones where unraid requires a disk ID for the license key that I don't recomend san disk.

see the PSA:

Thanks. My last two were Samsung 64GBs (smallest they had at the time) from amazon