How does one determine when USB flash drives (or SD cards) are or are not appropriate for a task that involves multiple write operations?
One example of such a task would be to use to manage photographs. This would require initial writes, plus writes every time you decide photos should be moved to a different folder to categorize them. Plus, if you want to crop a bunch of photos, add watermarks, or perform other edits that would require additional write operations. At some point, a flash drive just can't handle too much writing, but how does one determine if a use like this is appropriate?
If money grew on trees, the obvious answer would be to always use an SSD instead of a flash drive. But money doesn't grow on trees, and often USB flash drives are more economical. Plus, many of us have a bunch of USB drives or SD cards laying around.
But since USB flash drives (and SD cards) have lower limits to the amount of available write cycles, what is an effective technique to determine if a USB flash drive is suitable for a particular use case?
Related: What actually happens with an USB flash drive when it dies?
