Does it make sense to arrange a “double field” on an old flash drive with a worn-out beginning to extend its life?

Question

USB flash drives

I have a combat flash drive which is already 10 years old. I use it mercilessly editing text books directly on it 40 times a day, sometimes I even launch Denwer from it. (Transcend JetFlash if you are already delighted, I won’t say more - the letters have been erased.) Although I called her Immortal Joe, I feel that her end is near. At least because in the first half of the flash drive, the speed of working with data sank 5 times compared to the second. It just so happened that I always used only half of its 4 GB and the second half "walked" and can be said to be virginally fresh and untouched. So the question is: does it make sense now to clear it and fill the first 2 GB with an empty file, and continue working on the second half, thus providing it with many more years of hard but eventful life? Or it doesn’t work like that and the data on the flash drive is not written from the beginning,

Answer 1

it doesn’t work like that and the data on the flash drive is not written from the beginning, but somehow else?

It really doesn't work that way. A flash memory cell has a very small resource (several thousand entries), so the flash memory controller shuffles their addresses, averaging wear.

does it make sense now to clean it up and fill the first 2 GB with an empty file, and continue working on the second half, thus providing it with many more years of hard but eventful life?

You can't do that. In order for the controller to be able to deal with the above-mentioned shuffling of cells, it needs a reserve of empty cells, and for this reason the flash drive cannot be filled "to the eyeballs", it is necessary to leave free space (at least 15 ... 20% of its capacity).

in the first half of the flash drive, the speed of working with data sank 5 times compared to the second.

In a properly working flash drive, the controller tries to ensure uniform wear of the cells; for this, it replaces the most intensively used cells with others using a special algorithm, broadcasting their physical addresses. In reality, you are dealing (well, not you, but your OS) with virtual addresses that the controller palms off on you. Therefore, to say that one half is worn out and the other half is not is incorrect. However, as it was in the transend controllers 10 years ago, I don’t presume to judge - perhaps everything was simpler in those days.