Best USB flash drive manufacturer?


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rather than any particular company, although no name/novelty or promotional ones i would never buy/use, there pretty much all the same, 

 

first thing i would look for is design, where is the clip/loop that secures it to either a strap or to your keys, this should always be on the body of the drive and not on the cap, as the caps come off easily.

 

what is it made of? the plastic ones with a clip can break after a while, you dont want to find a later down the like the plastic part that secures the drive to a clip broke and your drive is gone

 

do they have a cap? or something that covers the USB end, because you will get all kinds of crud in the USB end if your keep them in your pocket.

 

USB 3.0 are the fastest, USB 2.0 are slightly cheaper, but the difference in price is small.

 

as long as you buy form a retailer and not Ebay (because there are tons of fakes) and keep backups, there all pretty much as reliable as the next. 

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Does anyone really ever have many problems with flash drives? I've used about every brand you can think of and I have never had any problems with any of them.

 

Any premium you pay is probably marketing bull**** or some novelty factor (shiny gold, doubles as a bottle opener, vibrates, grates cheese, etc.)

 

If you looked into benchmarks you would see that different USB drives can have a huge difference in read/write speeds. The cheaper drives usually have performance that matches the price.

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Mushkin, followed by ADATA. If you don't want to end up with some garbage flash drive just look at the negative newegg or amazon reviews for the drives you're interested in to see to see if anything worrisome was reported.

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Cheap drives tend to have slow writes. I've only had one drive fail on me. It was some cheap unbranded one.

 

Still have my first usb drive: a 128MB Dell-branded Lexar. That changed everything when I got it. Nowadays I use it for BIOS updates.

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Does anyone really ever have many problems with flash drives? I've used about every brand you can think of and I have never had any problems with any of them.

 

Any premium you pay is probably marketing bull**** or some novelty factor (shiny gold, doubles as a bottle opener, vibrates, grates cheese, etc.)

 

No. I've have a ton of usb thumb drives I've gotten free at conferences or picked up over the years and I've never had a problem with any of them. I've used them for things like OS installs, Live Keys, and presentation transfers. Then only time I'd actually bother to pay more for 'quality' is if I was looking for a 32-64GB stick. Anything smaller is dirt cheap and doesn't hold enough for R/W speeds to really matter at the end of the day.

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Sandisk Extreme 64GB USB 3 Flash Drive gets 190-210 MBPS transfer speeds to and from SSDs.

 

I like the ADATA DashDrive Elite 64GB. 99MBs Write/210MBs Read. Probably the same internals.

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If you looked into benchmarks you would see that different USB drives can have a huge difference in read/write speeds. The cheaper drives usually have performance that matches the price.

 

If you're only using it to transfer small-ish files the speed increase probably isn't worth the premium.

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Hello,

Does anyone really ever have many problems with flash drives? I've used about every brand you can think of and I have never had any problems with any of them.

Very very slow read/write speeds is what I mostly see happening with most flash drives.

Everyone recommends Sandisk....

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Does anyone really ever have many problems with flash drives? I've used about every brand you can think of and I have never had any problems with any of them.

I have, unfortunately. I'm on my third Corsair GT 64GB. I've had to RMA both after both went belly up. For some reason the 1st two went from just fine to a constantly-blinking blue light.

 

Needless to say, if it werent for the RMAs, i wouldnt be using this particular drive any more.

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  • 1 year later...

I have used a lot of brands and the only one that let me down multiple times was Kingston. For price I would recommend Adata, they have really fast USB 3.0 models at low prices compared to other similarly priced sticks.

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Best ?  Thats relative, but...

Fastest ? - Corsair Voyager GTX (SSD on a stick)  I have the 128GB
Most reliable ?  Possibly Corsair again ? Patriot ?  Centon ?

Dont really consider price as these things are not expensive (unless you get that 1TB Kingston)

I wholeheartedly recommend this:

128GB - $120
Fastest SSD on the planet
post-508501-0-33785700-1428735658.jpg


If you are looking @ the Sandisk Extreme in 64GB or larger, make sure you get the latest version.  There have been 2 versions.

When they first came out, to comply with Win8, they made the drives appear as a fixed disk according to Windows Explorer.
So, if you wanted to boot to it, many programs that make bootable USBs would not see the drive as it only looks for removable disks.

They realized the stupidity of their decision, and after about a year on the market, changed the firmware to make the drive appear as a removable disc.
If you get the older version, you can not hack it to "flip the bit" and make it look like a removable.

The Sandisk Extreme are quick, but I have had 2 go bad on me.  They are made of cheap plastic as well.

(they are rather slow compared to the Corsair GTX)

***The new Patriot Supersonic Rage 2 is pretty darned fast as well***

 

post-508501-0-85796600-1428736416.jpg

 

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I have, unfortunately. I'm on my third Corsair GT 64GB. I've had to RMA both after both went belly up. For some reason the 1st two went from just fine to a constantly-blinking blue light.

 

Needless to say, if it werent for the RMAs, i wouldnt be using this particular drive any more.

I had 3 of those Corsair Voyager GTR (big black and yellow) back in the day - they were plagued with problems of corrupted firmware and heat - got sick of RMA-ing those so I gave it to someone who wanted it

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Dont know about best make but the most annoying are the ones with the strap on the lid so you lose the drive if carried around on a key chain talk about annoying :s:rolleyes:

 

Write speeds isnt that important to me as its only an occasional use but I find the metal cased type like the Kingston work best for me providing good protection an ease of carry on the person

 

fb5b251e7ec71ed2c79910f0756054e2.png

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I have several of those Kingston and the write speed will bring a grown man to tears. Like you said though, if it isn't of primary importance to you, it can't be beaten for size and looks.

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This thread is from 2013 ;)  So its quite possible much of this info is no longer valid for best or anything to really..
 
I have been happy with
http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00H7PBXU2/
Silicon Power 16GB Blaze B30 USB 3.0 Swivel Flash Drive R/W up to 40/20 MB/s, Black (SP016GBUF3B30V1K)

 

Picked up a few of these to have in the desk, seemed like whenever someone needed something the 4 or 8 gigs I had were just a hair too small.  And they were slow at 2, so picked these up and also have couple of the 32gig and couple of the 8s that were on sale for like 5 bucks or something..

 

Price is good and like the design

post-14624-0-88104700-1428743900.png

 

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Aren't these notorious for having that non-bootable issue?

Yes, it what I was referring to in my previous post.  It didnt effect the smaller ones, just the 64GB and larger.  It has been "fixed" -

I have to laugh when I read "Sandisk" & "built to last" in the same sentence - they are junky plastic - just using faster chips.

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I'm looking to buy a Kangaru Defender. They aren't cheap but they are practically one of the only ones that still have write protection switches on them which I use in my office. Which are the only kid i'll insert in a customers computer inside Windows. Plus they have signed firmware :)

http://www.amazon.com/Defender-Elite30-Hardware-Encrypted-SuperSpeed/dp/B00KI1V5FK/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1428898043&sr=8-5&keywords=kanguru+defender

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If you are looking @ the Sandisk Extreme in 64GB or larger, make sure you get the latest version.  There have been 2 versions.

When they first came out, to comply with Win8, they made the drives appear as a fixed disk according to Windows Explorer.

So, if you wanted to boot to it, many programs that make bootable USBs would not see the drive as it only looks for removable disks.

They realized the stupidity of their decision, and after about a year on the market, changed the firmware to make the drive appear as a removable disc.

If you get the older version, you can not hack it to "flip the bit" and make it look like a removable.

 

 

 

Is there any way to differentiate between the two before buying? If you were to buy from Amazon for example, how would you know which one you're getting?

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Is there any way to differentiate between the two before buying? If you were to buy from Amazon for example, how would you know which one you're getting?

I dont think there is - when I get home I'll confirm - I can look @ old screenshots

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