From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG  Mon Oct 17 23:20:12 2011
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From: Chuck Swiger <cswiger@mac.com>
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Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2011 16:19:56 -0700
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To: Jason Usher <jusher71@yahoo.com>
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Subject: Re: USB thumb drives for bootable flash FreeBSD installation...
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Hi--

On Oct 17, 2011, at 3:53 PM, Jason Usher wrote:
> Are they all the same, or are there some USB flash choices that are more durable and fault tolerant than others ?

There's fairly significant differences:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory#Write_endurance

SLC NOR flash tends to last longer than NAND flash; SLC also tends to last longer than MLC.

Regards,
-- 
-Chuck