You can get (real!) SLC USB drives from Aliexpress too, for around $0.70/GB. These aren't the ultra-cheap ones which are often fake in capacity, but prominently advertise the type of flash and controller they use.
I also have some really small USB drives from around 2 decades ago, of course SLC flash (the only type of NAND flash at the time), and can confirm that their data is still intact. They've gone through probably a few dozen full-drive writes, while SLC flash back then was rated for 10 years retention after 100K cycles.
Yeah, I have 2 such from AliE and they perform well and haven't lost anything yet even though they have dozens of thousands of files at rest that are updated 1-2 times a month, for almost 3 years now. Quite pleased with them.
They are indeed more expensive but nothing that a programmer salary would notice even if you bought 10 of them. I am wondering whether I should buy another pair and use it as a metadata mirrored vdev on my media NAS. Haven't decided yet.
Yeah, thought the same. Not to mention that I tried to have a bunch of old USB sticks put into one of my servers and it added like two minutes to its reboot time. (Though admittedly I didn't fight hard with systemd to make sure their mounting does not block anything -- it's likely possible to do.)
Ultimately I am not willing to shell out hundreds of EUR for f.ex. 2x SLC internal SSDs at 32 or 64 GB each so I guess I'll just have a few spare disks around when I am back to being employed, and that's going to be that.
I also have some really small USB drives from around 2 decades ago, of course SLC flash (the only type of NAND flash at the time), and can confirm that their data is still intact. They've gone through probably a few dozen full-drive writes, while SLC flash back then was rated for 10 years retention after 100K cycles.