There are many fraudulent USB sticks in circulation that report to have a high capacity (ex: 8GB) but are really only capable of storing a much smaller amount (ex: 1GB). Attempts to write on these devices will often result in unrelated files being overwritten. Any use of a fraudulent flash memory device can easily lead to database corruption, therefore. Internet searches such as "fake capacity usb" will turn up lots of disturbing information about this problem.
https://www.sqlite.org/howtocorrupt.html