Cheap storage

[Shopgeezer]

So I have seen the Amazon ads for high capacity thumb drives but was amazed at this one. It claims 2TB for the price of $14.99 Cdn. The reviews on it are mixed. Some people claim it is garbage. I couldn’t resist and ordered one. As it came it wouldn’t display on my Mac, but did show in files on my Windows laptop. It seemed to copy files just fine on the laptop. On the Mac I opened the disk utility and could see the thumb drive as “Unknown” drive. I named it and reformatted it as exFat.

The drive showed up on the Mac and copied files just fine but trying to open a file directly from the thumb drive didn’t work. It showed as corrupt. I reformatted the drive as OS Mac and tried again. I copied a variety of files including some large Cad files and everything opened just fine directly from the thumb drive. But when I ejected it and plugged it in again, some files opened just fine, others showed as corrupt.

So not trustworthy. But in all cases the drive formatted as 2.1 TB and it did work at first. Maybe if you plug it in, format it and never unplug it the drive would be dependable. I am amazed that it worked at all. A better quality drive with dependable performance would be a great resource at even 4 times the price. Right now these drives are best treated as experimental.

https://www.amazon.ca/Waterproof-20...1676556313&sprefix=thumb+drive,aps,200&sr=8-3

 

[awake]

Generally these are spoofed to report a high capacity, but the actual capacity is much less. As you fill up its real capacity, it will either stop working or overwrite older files with newer ones, corrupting the data. DAMHIKT ...

 

[GreenTwin]

I use 1TB Sandisk flash drives, and have not had any problem with them.

I would not call them "inexpensive", but reasonably priced for the capacity, and reliable.

.

 

[awake]

Sandisk is a reliable brand in my experience. The key is, if the price sounds too good to be true ... it probably is, and that is true even if the "brand" is reputable. I first learned about this particular scam when I bought a "Samsung" SD card at an incredible bargain. Score! And it seemed to work ... at first ... until I tried to exceed the 2gig actual capacity. That's when I learned that I had bought a counterfeit.

 

[lee webster]

At arms length with an extended barge pole springs to mind.

 

[Richard Hed]

I use 1TB Sandisk flash drives, and have not had any problem with them.

I would not call them "inexpensive", but reasonably priced for the capacity, and reliable.

.

Where do you get them?

 

[Zeb]

If it helps any, Garmin recommends Sandisk for loading software on their integrated flight decks . The same factory may produce several grades of chips and the ones with most errors likely end up for sale on some obscure corner of the net.

 

[MrMetric]

There are a host of reputable vendors of thumb drives, Sandisk included. The problem now, however, is that it seems like Amazon exercises almost zero quality control over the products listed on their site. Counterfeit products are rife in China, which results in those being listed on Amazon. Frankly, I'm not sure I trust that a Sandisk I buy there is, in fact, a real Sandisk product. If someone is going to go through the trouble of selling an 8GB product as a 2TB product, they sure as heck can make it look like a Sandisk package. . The same is true with eBay, although they seem to be willing to police a tiny bit better with their VERO program. So, if you see a clearly fraudulent Mitutoyo caliper, for instance, eBay will pull it if Mitutoyo is signed up with VERO.

The whole "guarantee" of Amazon is a bit sketchy too. Sure, for the first month you can return something to them. But after that, they tell you to deal with the manufacturer, but often the manufacturer won't even answer an email or you have to return the product to China. Clearly that isn't cost effective, so you just eat the cost of the product.

Don't get me wrong... Although I have liked Amazon in the past, but I think Jeff Bezos was actually correct... Amazon is its own worst enemy. The more popular it has gotten, the more attractive it has become to poor business practices. Now it tries to sell itself as just a "platform", thereby divorcing itself from anything to do with the product, even though the product is often shipped from an Amazon warehouse. And there are 15 identical products with wildly different pricing, etc.

Anyhow, I digress.... Of all the different memory products that have been available, the least reliable have been memory sticks. I don't know why this is, but several have spewed forth corrupted files, even reputable brands. In addition, they are easily lost or broken (unless you have very low profile ones). I still love the sticks, but I would never trust them as the sole archival product for a treasured file.

 

[GreenTwin]

Where do you get them?

From the SanDisk website.

I guess they merged or are owned by Western Digital?

https://www.westerndigital.com/products/usb-flash-drives
Here is a 1TB for about $86.00 US.

https://www.westerndigital.com/prod...ual-drive-luxe-usb-3-1-type-c#SDDDC4-1T00-G46
.

 

[Mike Ginn]

MrMetric is correct and GreenTwin gives about the correct price for a 1TB thumb drive. If the price is much less then beware! Reliability can be a big issue as can speed. As a user I think you should ask yourself the following question "Why do I need a 1TB thumb drive?" Thumb drives should only be used for moving files around and these will never approach 1TB in size. I only use drives of 64 or 128GB which I find is an ample size and not costly.
Many folk use thumb drives or more correctly called flash drives as backup devices hence the need for 1, 2, or 3TB. This is a very dangerous path and you risk loosing all your date especially with a cheap drive. There are many backup solutions. The Freecom Tough Drive is very reliable (2TB £92) and robust. I use a separate SSD on my desktop but of course that option is not open to laptop users. Without getting into NAD technology, Freecom is a good solution.

If you must use a flash drive then purchase from the manufacturer - Western Digital in the case of Scandisk but keep at least 2 copies of your data.

Did I mention the cloud? maybe another post!

Mike

 

[minh-thanh]

Damaged USB or data loss is usually due to poor quality USB or fake
Or... Could also be due to usage
I see some people who never turn off the USB connection to the computer before unplugging the USB , and that is more likely to cause data corruption with the large USB capacity and and large data files

 

[GreenTwin]

MrMetric is correct and GreenTwin gives about the correct price for a 1TB thumb drive. If the price is much less then beware! Reliability can be a big issue as can speed. As a user I think you should ask yourself the following question "Why do I need a 1TB thumb drive?" Thumb drives should only be used for moving files around and these will never approach 1TB in size. I only use drives of 64 or 128GB which I find is an ample size and not costly.
Many folk use thumb drives or more correctly called flash drives as backup devices hence the need for 1, 2, or 3TB. This is a very dangerous path and you risk loosing all your date especially with a cheap drive. There are many backup solutions. The Freecom Tough Drive is very reliable (2TB £92) and robust. I use a separate SSD on my desktop but of course that option is not open to laptop users. Without getting into NAD technology, Freecom is a good solution.

If you must use a flash drive then purchase from the manufacturer - Western Digital in the case of Scandisk but keep at least 2 copies of your data.

Did I mention the cloud? maybe another post!

Mike

"Why do I need a 1TB flash drive?".

Let me name the ways, I keep my work stuff on one, and my non-work stuff on another.
I keep a backup set local, and another backup set remote in another location.

I have things like 200 (+) old steam engine books in pdf format, and maybe 75 old books on foundry work, including the Navy Foundry Manual.
I have photos going back maybe 20 years.

I was using mini-hard drives, but they always failed at some point, generally at some critical time.

The cloud is not private, not that I have anything to hide, but client confidentiality and such.

My total storage requirements right now are about 1.3 TB.
Yes I have a lot of photos, and work photos too, which are high res.

I keep two 1TB flash drives on my key chain, and where I go they go.
These are my working drives.
Works well for me.

.

 

[Mike Ginn]

Whatever works is fine but those who use cheap usb drives are asking for trouble especially if they are for backup. Working drives on a key ring are a great convenience but they should never be the master/backup
Mike