Cheap flash drives that aren't terrible?

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barich

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  • #1
    I like to have a handful of cheap flash drives lying around for boot media, firmware updates, etc. 32 GB is more than enough capacity usually.

    Unfortunately, the ones I've bought lately have been absolute trash. Ungodly slow and inconsistent write speeds, abysmal reliability, etc. These were PNY and Microcenter branded USB 3.0 drives.

    I don't even need them to be that great. Like 40-50 MBps sequential writes would be fine. 10 MBps, followed by intermittent drops to zero while the copy process freezes and latency skyrockets, not so much.

    Do I have to buy a much higher capacity drive than I need and spend more than I want just to get something that isn't borderline unusable?
     
    continuum

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  • #2
    32GB is fine, it's just not buying trash. Every maker has some better model lines within their lineup than others.

    We've been buying Samsung BAR Plus ($12 for 64GB) that have been pretty good, don't see the 32GB model currently in stock but we have used a ton of 32GB model in the past. Haven't used as many of the Kingston Kyson ($7.99 for 32GB) but those supposedly are okay too.

    Ordered a few Lexar Jumpdrive V100 (3-pack of 32GB for $14.99) that are significantly slower than the Samsung BAR Plus drives, especially for writes, but not so slow to be offensive.
     
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    koala

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  • #5
    barich said:
    I like to have a handful of cheap flash drives lying around for boot media, firmware updates, etc. 32 GB is more than enough capacity usually.
    Click to expand...
    Mid 2022 I got fed up with flash drives and bought a WD USB SSD and set up Ventoy on it. I don't use it very frequently, but when I do, I'm really happy with the decision. This costed 70€.

    With Ventoy, I can just copy any ISO to the drive and then I can choose whatever ISO from the boot menu. This means I can have just a single drive and I don't have to reflash it all the time.

    Because of this, I could use it for storage but... I haven't had to copy files over USB since I bought it. I even did some research and testing, and used UDF instead of FAT in Ventoy; this way it could handle large files and... well, not use FAT. I haven't used it so little for regular files (just adding some ISOs to the drive when I need them), that I cannot endorse UDF yet. And it has a small drawback: macOS requires using the CLI to mount it- all the software comes in the base macOS install, but IIRC, macOS only automounts full-disk UDF, not partitions.

    The other problem is that USB SSDs have odder form factors. But that's fine with me.

    (Later I bought another 70€ Lexar, mostly to play with using it as the boot drive for RPIs. Just yesterday I said goodbye to it, because it went into a DVB-T recording appliance for my dad.)
     
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    Lord Evermore

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  • #6
    koala said:
    Mid 2022 I got fed up with flash drives and bought a WD USB SSD and set up Ventoy on it.
    Click to expand...
    Still good to have some flash drives handy. With Ventoy, unetbootin, Yumi and others, I'd occasionally run into something that just wouldn't boot properly and needed to be installed directly onto the USB stick as the only OS. Seemed to be an issue with certain combinations of hardware and the ISO being used, as they'd often work fine on other systems. You could also need to use a utility on USB that doesn't work with NTFS or exFAT or UDF (at the very least meaning it can't save log files or something like that). UDF seems to be an awful choice. There are also some USB SSDs that are barely any bigger than a flash drive although they're definitely not a form factor where you could plug multiple ones in beside other devices without a cable.
     
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  • #8
    I somewhat agree with barich's feelings about PNY drives. They are cheap (are often on sale) and come in multi-packs. I have never had one fail on me but writing to them is SLOOOOW (both 2.0 and 3.0 drives). For boot media and firmware, I can live with cheap and reliable but slow.

    I can see the Microcenter branded ones having bad reliability. They give them away for free quite often and any free flash drive is not to be trusted.

    Samsung drives seem to be the gold standard, but because of that the amount of counterfeits out there are astronomically high (same thing with Samsung microsd cards). Make sure you are buying from a trusted souce. I'm still a little suspect of Amazon, I know at one point they co-mingled their stock with products provided by 3rd party sellers.
     
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    barich

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  • #9
    koala said:
    Mid 2022 I got fed up with flash drives and bought a WD USB SSD and set up Ventoy on it. I don't use it very frequently, but when I do, I'm really happy with the decision. This costed 70€.

    With Ventoy, I can just copy any ISO to the drive and then I can choose whatever ISO from the boot menu. This means I can have just a single drive and I don't have to reflash it all the time.

    Because of this, I could use it for storage but... I haven't had to copy files over USB since I bought it. I even did some research and testing, and used UDF instead of FAT in Ventoy; this way it could handle large files and... well, not use FAT. I haven't used it so little for regular files (just adding some ISOs to the drive when I need them), that I cannot endorse UDF yet. And it has a small drawback: macOS requires using the CLI to mount it- all the software comes in the base macOS install, but IIRC, macOS only automounts full-disk UDF, not partitions.

    The other problem is that USB SSDs have odder form factors. But that's fine with me.

    (Later I bought another 70€ Lexar, mostly to play with using it as the boot drive for RPIs. Just yesterday I said goodbye to it, because it went into a DVB-T recording appliance for my dad.)
    Click to expand...

    Last time I tried Ventoy, it required jumping through hoops to work with Secure Boot turned on. Is that still the case?
     
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    Lord Evermore

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  • #10
    barich said:
    Last time I tried Ventoy, it required jumping through hoops to work with Secure Boot turned on. Is that still the case?
    Click to expand...
    They still have the page on the site with all the instructions for getting it to work in the cases where it doesn't automatically work, so I'd guess that's still the case. But I'd bet that's not all that common, and disabling secure boot is pretty easy on most systems, even OEM. There are still a lot of bootable tools that can't work with it.
     
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    koala

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  • #11
    Well, you can still buy a second real SSD USB drive. They are of course more expensive than a flash USB, but I think of them as a safer bet with less chances of having headaches.

    I'm not endorsing UDF yet. ext4/NTFS/whatever macOS I prefer. FAT gives me bad vibes. Not sure UDF is better- I'm just treating as an alternative to FAT that doesn't require installing additional software- but I still treat it as "disposable", not putting anything important on it (but for Ventoy and sneakernet it should be fine).

    IIRC, there's only been one ISO that didn't work for me in Ventoy- I don't remember what it was, but I did have to use the second SSD for that. WRT. to SecureBoot.. I think most of the systems I've worked with don't have SecureBoot, or they have it disabled. Likely I just disabled it when I needed.
     
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  • #12
    Lord Evermore said:
    The one time I tried a metal-casing flash drive, it got so hot during use that I couldn't even touch it.
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    A common problem with e.g. Sandisk drives, but from my testing Samsung's tend to run less hot.* It also depends on what you're plugging it into and where it'll be. A car that gets lots of sun through the windows? Probably not a great fit. A tiny laptop that already has issues shedding thermals? Maybe not the best for leaving it plugged in all day, but not terrible. A Raspberry Pi that's already trying its damnedest to bake itself just sitting there and will turn absolutely anything you plug into it into a radiator? Well, maybe in that case opt for a plastic drive instead.
    A larger, actively cooled PC or small-form-factor PC-based computer product? No harm.
    *Note: based on a previous generation of the Bar drive, in 128GB.
     
    Paladin

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  • #13
    Lord Evermore said:
    The one time I tried a metal-casing flash drive, it got so hot during use that I couldn't even touch it.
    Click to expand...
    Imagine if it had been in a plastic enclosure! The chips would have melted! ;)

    Seriously though, up to a certain point, a hot external metal case means 'it's working' because it is dissipating heat from the electronics to the outside air. Of course, if it was really that hot, maybe something was wrong with it. I've certainly had some very warm ones, but never any that felt painful to touch, regardless of Sandisk, Samsung, Micron, noname, etc. The worst are the Sandisk Cruzer Fit (older model than the current one). They are small and initially kind of fast but they get really hot because it is both very small and has a plastic exterior so it can't get rid of the heat as well. They slow down a lot after a bit of sustained transfer.
     
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  • #14
    Paladin said:
    Imagine if it had been in a plastic enclosure! The chips would have melted!
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    Yeah I did consider that aspect, but I figure if most drives are fine with plastic casings then it's not really an issue, and I'd rather have a drive I can touch than be concerned about the temperature of a plastic-cased one. Metal is great for durability if I were putting them into a situation where they're getting the shit beat out of them, but even plastic is going to hold up pretty well there. I think it was a SanDisk Ultra Flair.

    I've actually had a Cruzer Fit 32GB plugged into my car for several years with my MP3 collection on it. Obviously not much load on that, and it's only USB 2.0 anyway. The plastic only partially covers it, and there is metal underneath it. When I've brought it inside to wipe and copy over improved versions the performance was fine but that was only 11GB. It always impresses me that they can make a flash drive that tiny, or a wireless adapter that small, but the standard size is more than 10 times larger.
     
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    koala

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  • #16
    Long term update:

    www.sami-lehtinen.net

    Sami Lehtinen - exFAT (Extended File Allocation Table) vs UDF (Universal Disk Format) - File System for Flash Drives

    Post date: Apr 3, 2018 6:03:56 AM
    www.sami-lehtinen.net www.sami-lehtinen.net

    Reasons why I bothered even to check out UDF, were the fact that exFAT free space bitmap gets often corrupted (lost disk space) and you can't get it fixed on Linux without reformat. Yet I also managed to corrupt UDF on unclean dismout tests quite quickly, ending up with file which couldn't be read or deleted. Just as with exFAT there's no way to fix this, except to format the device again.
    Click to expand...

    My Ventoy got some issues two years after setting it up; one file refused to be deleted, like that post says. Still, it seems to be more reliable than FAT-based FSs for me (which I have managed to corrupt quite frequently), and I prefer the failure mode (with FAT it was quite "silent").

    Not sure what I will use for Ventoy next. Maybe still UDF, but caveat emptor. I wouldn't still entrust any important file to other than the "commercially supported for long-term storage majors" (NTFS, ZFS, ext4, xfs, etc.)- so I'm just looking at something that won't require too-frequent reformats.
     
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  • #17
    Samsung FIT Plus drives are pretty good and fast, and on sale on Amazon right now. The 64GB is only $13.99, 128GB is $17.99. $26 for 256GB. I bought a couple 256GB ones last year, they read/write pretty fast, and only get a little warm when pressed. Larger than you're wanting, but at this price and the performance it's worth it, IMO. I used ATTO to test them, reads were near 400MB/s, writes just over 100MB/s. Work great with Ventoy.
     
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    Deathmonkey

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  • #18
    Just to add to the list of brands to avoid : Adata

    I got an admittedly cheap 64GB drive from Newegg and it lasted less than 10 minutes. I started copying files over just to see how fast (slow) the drive was and suddenly I get an error saying it can't copy files over because the drive can't be found. I remove the drive, plug it back in, and the system doesn't even see the drive. It is toast.
     
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    Lord Evermore

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  • #19
    Deathmonkey said:
    Just to add to the list of brands to avoid : Adata

    I got an admittedly cheap 64GB drive from Newegg and it lasted less than 10 minutes. I started copying files over just to see how fast (slow) the drive was and suddenly I get an error saying it can't copy files over because the drive can't be found. I remove the drive, plug it back in, and the system doesn't even see the drive. It is toast.
    Click to expand...
    I don't think that's evidence that the brand is entirely to be avoided. Adata has been around a really long time and produces decent stuff. RAM, SSDs, flash drives, etc. They may be a bit less reliable than some of the other big names, but you balance that with cost to decide if it's worth it to you.
     
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  • #20
    Lord Evermore said:
    I don't think that's evidence that the brand is entirely to be avoided. Adata has been around a really long time and produces decent stuff. RAM, SSDs, flash drives, etc. They may be a bit less reliable than some of the other big names, but you balance that with cost to decide if it's worth it to you.
    Click to expand...

    I know they've been around for a while, I had avoided them until now mainly because of the reputation of their SSD's. Adata was (is?) the poster-child for completely changing internal specs of their drives after reviews and keeping the same model name.

    I only got the flash drive because it was cheap though one a Newegg's daily group buys. I figured for $3 I could see if the brand had earned its middling reputation ... in my opinion it has. Thankfully I wasn't updating a bios when it failed.
     
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  • #21
    Deathmonkey said:
    Adata was (is?) the poster-child for completely changing internal specs of their drives after reviews and keeping the same model name.
    Click to expand...
    Even bigger and "better" names like Kingston and others have done that, and not just with flash drives or SSDs. Had an amazingly good drive, then changed the specs so it was kinda crap, but still technically within the same specifications on the package, and the fine print on the package said they may change components. Or produce two different lines at the same time with the same name but different components (again, still within spec) so you don't know which one you're going to get unless you're buying in a physical store and can see the box to get serial numbers or sub-part numbers.

    A complete failure of an almost cheaper than can be believed flash drive is a different issue from varying performance of some models of SSDs that are still within the advertised specifications.

    Just a guess, but was it one of those flash drives with the swiveling metal cover? Like these?
    View: https://www.amazon.com/SIMMAX-Memory-Storage-Swivel-Design/dp/B01GXJTFHK
     
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    barich

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  • #22
    Deathmonkey said:
    Just to add to the list of brands to avoid : Adata

    I got an admittedly cheap 64GB drive from Newegg and it lasted less than 10 minutes. I started copying files over just to see how fast (slow) the drive was and suddenly I get an error saying it can't copy files over because the drive can't be found. I remove the drive, plug it back in, and the system doesn't even see the drive. It is toast.
    Click to expand...

    Funnily enough the first USB 3.0 flash drive I bought, probably 10+ years ago, was an Adata, and it wasn't particularly high end or anything. It wrote at 50 MBps sustained. It recently started intermittently disappearing from the OS so I pitched it. Even the new Samsungs I just bought thanks to this thread only write at 35 MBps. Which is fast enough to not irritate me, but it would be nice if one could expect products to actually improve over time. I guess if you want modern write speeds you've got to get one of the drives that is basically an SSD on a stick. But those are too expensive for the boot media/firmware update drives I want to have a handful of.
     
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  • #23
    Lord Evermore said:
    ...
    Just a guess, but was it one of those flash drives with the swiveling metal cover? Like these?
    Click to expand...

    It was a basic Adata UV128 64Gb

    All plastic with the retractable capless design. Nothing fancy, though I did like the retraction mechanism better than PNY's. That sliding plastic shroud requires way too much force when the drives are new.
     
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    Lord Evermore

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  • #24
    barich said:
    I guess if you want modern write speeds you've got to get one of the drives that is basically an SSD on a stick.
    Click to expand...
    I think there's a limit in the way a "flash drive" controller addresses the flash and how many channels there are, although it definitely ought to get faster over time. The flash chips are basically the same as in an SSD I think, perhaps packaged differently, but most USB flash drives are designed to a price point rather than with performance in mind. You buy a cheap one, you get a controller that hasn't been enhanced to fully take advantage of new flash (and probably uses flash that is a few generations old, where the flash manufacturer is getting the most they can out of the equipment they already have paid for that has almost perfect yields by now). Or the super tiny ones that just can't fit a high-performance controller and flash chip inside.

    My old SanDisk Ultra 16GB and 32GB sticks write at a whopping 13MBps. My SanDisk Extreme 64GB (ONE of the models that goes by that name) writes at 95MBps. But there are USB flash drives (not USB SSDs) that can manage 200+, even 300+. They don't even cost that much. (And the smaller USB SSD sticks aren't terribly expensive, but they don't serve the same purpose as something like a 16GB or 64GB flash drive.)
     
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