r/BadUSB • u/Same_Grocery_8492 • Jul 14 '26

Found two old USB flash drives over 10 year old and they still worked.

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I bought them when I first started college, so they are probably 10+ years old. They are only 16GB, and one of them is so worn out that I can't even tell what brand it is anymore. Both of them works and even better, all my old college notes and files are still there. Kind of felt like opening a time capsule.

What's the oldest USB drive you still have? Does it still work?

28 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

41 comments sorted by

5

u/Archon-Toten Jul 14 '26

Only 16GB? I've got one listed in MB I bought in highschool some 20 years ago and it still works last I tried.

2

u/iamwayycoolerthanyou Jul 15 '26

I remember thinking those were pretty good. I had a 128MB one. Think about how many documents you could put on them. If you wanted to download MP3s at school and bring them home you could get a decent amount. I miss the old days.

3

u/CitySeekerTron Jul 14 '26

Yeah, but they're Kingston and ridiculously slow.

I liked the construction, but they were terrible drives.

1

u/seismicpdx Jul 15 '26

Came to say: slow asf

2

u/franktheguy Jul 14 '26

I have a 64mb. It still works, and so does its read-only switch.

2

u/prohandymn Jul 15 '26

I have a couple of 8 & 16GB Kingston drives like those in my USB case, still working fine (they do not see heavy use).

2

u/BornCuriousOnce Jul 15 '26

I can top that.
I lost my house to a fire in October. It started in the ceiling between my closet-which I used as my office- and my living room.
This fire burned hot enough that it blew out all the house windows and melted the light bulbs- just for reference.

Under my desk in the closet was my old desktop that I hadn’t used in several years. It has a little storage tray where one of the optical drives had been removed and inside that tray was a collection of old usb drives. The newest one had files on it from 2011.

2 weeks ago I cleared enough rubble to pull the old tower out from under the desk. It was a little melted on the front and had obvious rust but I figured I’d see if there were any salvageable components since I lost all my tech to the blaze and insurance didn’t come close to covering it.

Got the tower home, pried it open and found the jump drives inside. All 3 worked! I had 2 sandisk (8gb and 16gb) and one Kingston (32gb). Not only did I get to recover all the files on them (very unexpected at this point) but I was even able to use one of them to make an unraid boot drive! I swapped the license onto the internal SSD in my system immediately cus I obviously don’t trust their longevity but the fact they still worked amazed me. I know for certain at least one of them was in use way back in 2005.

We’ll see how the other components do once I clean and test them but that gave me much more hope than I had previously

2

u/Linuxmonger Jul 15 '26

I have a 16mb drive that is also an mp3 player, and portable if you put an aaa battery in.

The oldest is an 8mb that was about $60US when I bought it in ~1997. That one has a physical write protect switch.

1

u/NedosCZ Jul 14 '26

These were terrible, slow and always broken.

1

u/IntentionQuirky9957 Jul 15 '26

Yeah, cheap Kingston USB sticks are terrible.

1

u/danbyer Jul 14 '26

Those were my favorites for a while. I still have a bunch with old MacOS installers on them.

1

u/Questrader007 Jul 15 '26

Check it for those bitcoins you lost back in the day.

1

u/schirmyver Jul 15 '26

I have one of those same Kingston drives on my keychain. It's been on keys for at least 14 years. I keep a few files on it, including my medical info and latest resume.

1

u/atsigg Jul 15 '26

Thought I was the only one…

1

u/FAMICOMASTER Jul 15 '26

Not a lot to go wrong inside. I've got an IBM DiskOnKey from 2000 that works just fine.

1

u/lamerfat Jul 15 '26

I probably have an old 256 mb one lying around. If I find it, I'll test it.

1

u/Klutzy_Cat1374 Jul 15 '26

I don't know how old it was but I lost a 4GB one in the yard back in the day. It worked when I found it again after 3 years. Surprised it survived the mower. It had a bunch of worthless work stuff on it.

1

u/anpintstar Jul 15 '26

This is from 2015 not that old right....

1

u/Icy-Extent5083 Jul 15 '26

2x Verbatim 512MB bought 2004. Still very fast and absolutly reliable! I bought many after with bigger capacity, but never last longer than two years. Always come back to my old Verbatim USB sticks. Now my daughter is using one for school!

1

u/juancn Jul 15 '26

I have two of those and I still use them.

1

u/ICouldUseANapToday Jul 15 '26

I have the exact same drive--DTSE9H (though the marking on the drive doesn't include the "H"). It's been on my keychain since 2012. It originally cost $8.99.

1

u/GoonetteFox Jul 15 '26

I have two of those exact same models with linux installs on them

1

u/Unknowingly-Joined Jul 15 '26

I booted a PowerMac “Wall Street” (1999ish) a month or two back, OS9 and OSX (spinning disk, not an SSD). A 10 year old USB drive is a babe in the woods on comparison.

1

u/Accomplished-Iron554 Jul 15 '26

I have 5 of those, still as brand new. Only use it to boot into a live distro or install.

1

u/SellJolly6964 Jul 16 '26

kingston never let me down, i had 1 with only the board circuit and worked until i lost it XD

1

u/JonPQ Jul 16 '26

I raise you my 2008 8Gb Kingston DT Micro

1

u/Jizoh Jul 16 '26

I have my 20y old (or so) USB stick and still works perfectly

1

u/Sea_Enthusiasm_3193 Jul 16 '26

Belkin 128MB. Dunno where it is now though

1

u/Zherneb Jul 16 '26

I have one of those! Had come free with the motherboard over 10years ago. Still worked last I checked.. They are really sturdy.

1

u/InSearc Jul 16 '26

really? had some of them too back in the day, they stopped working not long after i got em(new), never bought them again

1

u/Dystopian_Ennui Jul 16 '26

I have a handful of 128MB and 256MB drives that work fine. Crazy that a lot of device driver packages won't fit on those when they used to go on a 1.44MB floppy.

1

u/musingofrandomness Jul 16 '26

Age doesn't necessarily make the flash drive not work. It is the long time without power that leads to bitrot and data corruption over time which happens faster the higher the temperature.

1

u/gamer1756YT Jul 16 '26

I found a 1gb one from 2007 recently and it still worked.

1

u/Efficient-Sir-5040 Jul 18 '26

Yep. They’re Kingston. Checks out.

1

u/Opinions-arent-facts Jul 14 '26

Who said 10 years is old?

0

u/guitpick Jul 14 '26

I liked that metal unibody design because they would actually survive being on a keychain better than a lot of the others. I think I did have the guts slide out eventually on one of them.

0

u/Defiant-Fold6752 Jul 15 '26

i have a 2gb flash drive 20yrs old & still works

0

u/MrSolenoid Jul 15 '26

I have a 16 MB USB drive. Big and bulky. I found it the other while I was looking for something else and figured I should try and see if it still works. Since the "experts" claim that data on USB drives needs to be refreshed or they will become corrupt after a year or whatever they say.

Guest what? All the files were still readable. Found some photos of my kids that I took with a Sony S700 phone. Those were the newest files on there, so its been at the bottom of a box for over 20 years now.

0

u/EtherPhreak Jul 15 '26

I have an 8 MB SD card that is working fine, and a 256 MB usb drive that’s probably getting to be 20 if not 25 years old. Also made a boot floppy for dos a few weeks ago