I'm using Sandisk Cruzer Contour sticks for this purpose (with our firewall hosts for example). They're quite durable and fast.
USB sticks generally have problems when it comes to many write cycles (shouldn't fail within such a short time though, mean time between failure is about one million writes per cell iirc). Anything that causes a lot of writes shouldn't be directly on the stick if possible. E.g. /var/log can be placed in a ramdisk as well.

PS: You may also consider using an (external) 2,5" harddisk instead of an USB stick. They consume almost no power, don't heat up much and you won't hear it as well. And they're fast.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: rainmailbox2001-ola@yahoo.ca [mailto:rainmailbox2001-ola@yahoo.ca]
> Sent: Thursday, August 21, 2008 6:36 AM
> To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
> Subject: Which USB stick for Debian root filesystem
>
> Hello.
>
> Today, I have experienced file system crash on my USB
> stick. I had been running Debian on it for less than two months, and
> today it just started having problems reading some files. I ran fsck
> and... let's just say there was not much left from my file system
>
> Yes,
> I heard that USB sticks are not very reliable. But it died after only
> two months! I was expecting it to run without problems for at least a
> year or so.
>
> In the light of this, I really don't know what USB
> drive should I chose now. My previous USB was an cheap A-Data (which
> now sounds like a very poor choice). Are other memory sticks (Kingston,
> OCZ, etc) more reliable?
>
> Please share some of your experience.
> Which USB drives would you recommend, and which are not good for 24/7
> usage as Linux root file system?
>
> I don't want to install my
> system on a hard drive because of power consumption and heat. I really
> want to use USB drive, but I need something that will last for more
> than two months.



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rainmailbox2001-ola@yahoo.ca wrote:

Hello.

Today, I have experienced file system crash on my USB
stick. I had been running Debian on it for less than two months, and
today it just started having problems reading some files. I ran fsck
and... let's just say there was not much left from my file system


Yes,
I heard that USB sticks are not very reliable. But it died after only
two months! I was expecting it to run without problems for at least a
year or so.

In the light of this, I really don't know what USB
drive should I chose now. My previous USB was an cheap A-Data (which
now sounds like a very poor choice). Are other memory sticks (Kingston,
OCZ, etc) more reliable?

Please share some of your experience.
Which USB drives would you recommend, and which are not good for 24/7
usage as Linux root file system?

I don't want to install my
system on a hard drive because of power consumption and heat. I really
want to use USB drive, but I need something that will last for more
than two months.




I have been using Sandisk and Kingston sticks for over 2 years (gee has
it been that long) and they are still working. I don't know what you
have in your /etc/fstab for you system but the following is what I use.


/dev/sdb1 /media/flash vfat rw,user,noauto,noatime 0 0
^^^^^^^
the noatime was said to be necessary for long USB stick life. It seens
to have worked here.


YMMV

Wayne


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