SanDisk Warranty Period

• In Asia-Pacific regions, the SanDisk Warranty Period for its Cruser product line is 5 years; outside of this region it is 2 years. This means that for the United States and Europe, SanDisk will not guarantee more than 2 years of lifetime.
  
  

Factors

• Various factors lead to a flash drive breaking, but what breaks is the components external to the memory cells. Lifetime as such depends on how the stick is treated, such as how forcefully it is inserted and removed, how often it is used, and how carefully it is stored. Kept in a safe, dry, cool and dark place, a flash drive should last for many years.
  
  

Studies

• The memory cells will eventually wear out with use. This does take a long time, but the smaller the drive, the larger the amount of data stored on the drive and the frequency with which it is used affect how often cells of the memory will be used, and so the quicker the memory will wear out. A study on flash memory life cycles by Imation states that a 32 GB drive that is rewritten 10 times a day (has 320 GB usage each day) will last an average of 23.7 years. The same drive that has 3.2 GB of usage a day will last 2,366.1 years.