The article mentions lifetime/longevity/data retention, although not an 8GB drive that had been written to multiple times... I recently purchased a 2GB Sandisk Cruzer Titanium (nostalgia) thumbdrive off eBay, new in package.

Since drives at the time typically had preinstalled software like U3 or some app to encrypt your files, I wondered if a drive as old as this one would still be readable, never having had power since it was packaged up.

It was.

https://i.imgur.com/0dNo5ni.png

14 years.

It outlived nearly every CDR and DVDR I had.