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USB is intelligent. The device should draw as much current as it asks for. If the device is not detecting any host to do any data transfer with, then it is probably idling at lowest unit power load. I would bet it’s not bad for it in any way. As long as that power brick lives up to the standard.
So, technically flash storage is just electric charge stored in a cell and it does need periodic recharging as the cells leak over time (3+ years minimum). If the flash controller is capable of doing this automatically, then powering the drive like this may enable that to happen. I wouldn’t bet on it though.
Actually that’s not as absurd as it seems. NAND memory starts corrupting data if it doesn’t get any current for few years. I’m not sure if just power on USB triggers it or does controller on device need to be specifically activated by OS detection. I guess controller goes on the moment it gets power.
In theory, just getting current does nothing. It has to be rewritten. It uses hot electron tunneling.
However, I recently found an mp3-player I hadn’t used since longer than 2017 on the bottom of a drawer. It was stored without battery. I put an AAA battery in and it played the stored music just fine.
Older lithography holds charge longer; the pursuit of more storage at cheaper prices results in engineering sacrifices to make it happen.
Older devices also stored fewer bits per well. It’s much easier for the data to get corrupted when the difference in voltage between two values is smaller.
