Usb sticks tend to have awful transfer speeds if you don't spend a decent amount
I really don't get this, but then again I haven't browsed the web to look at read/write speeds. It used to be that as soon as flash sticks became a thing, they were several times faster than the current hard disk drives. Of course, SSD has come along and HDD's have continued to improve in transfer rates (but are still pretty damn slow), so it's hard for me to imagine a flash memory device being slower than a mechanical hard disk...
I wouldn't rely on a USB stick to store anything important. If it dies, good luck recovering data from it.
And hard drive is more reliable.
Again, I really don't see why this has become a thing. I've got thumb drives from over 15 years ago that still work. It's amazing to me I've still got files from college. On what planet is a mechanical hard disk drive more reliable than the thing with
no moving parts? If you're really worried about recover-ability, you're best off using a disc. I suppose if one of these mechanical drives dies, you can turn it in to a shop to recover your data... but that's begging for any of your personal files to end up in someone else's possession.