“flash drives aren’t considered stable storage.”
I’ve read of flash drives left in clothing that went through washer/dryer cycles that work perfectly and still have all their data. Why aren’t they considered stable?
They are electromagnetic storage and can be erased by a sufficiently large or powerful magnetic field.
They also have a limited number of erase/write cycles before they go bad, and have a higher DOA rate than standard hard drives.
Optical, on the other hand, is a lot more durable.