USB flash drives.

I got a set of three 16GB uSb flash drives from Argos yesterday, Sandisk ones and only USB 2.0, they were as cheap there as on Amazon. The plugs are plastic and it seems a lot of them seems to be plastic these days.
I Have some Lexar 8GB ones and they are plastic as well, but then I got 5 of them just over a tenner at the time, so I was not expecting great things. They lasted for a few years, but now some of them the plastic is cracking.

Ihave just seen these, but the prices seem a bit too good to be true.

Too good to be true ...

It is a good offer, the one possible line to suggest they are genuine is "Sold and despatched by Amazon"

In reply to a post by MHC:

Too good to be true ...

It is a good offer, the one possible line to suggest they are genuine is "Sold and despatched by Amazon"

That is true, I may grab them as well.
I have seen cheaper ones, but they normally unbranded, and you could end up with anything.
I think I will order them as well, the USB 2 ones are fine for small documents that are not going to take long to transfer.

It has reminded me that I need a couple of USB-C version and a dual USB

In reply to a post by MHC:

It has reminded me that I need a couple of USB-C version and a dual USB

USB-C flash drives? i have heard they are around, but have never seen one. The USB-c on this machine is around the back and for some reason it doesn't work too well. i stuck a high Sd card reader on it with a small extension cable and while it will work fine with lower speed cards, it fails with UHS-II cards from the camera. It may be the length of the extension, but with an adaptor I have plugged it into the USB3 on the monitor, and it works fine. Could be a power problem I suppose, but surly that would affect the lower speed cards as well.

Anyway, USB-c flash drives would be no good for me, even if I did have one on the front of this machine.
I still have the problem of USB 2 devices not working in my USB 3 ports on the front of the machine, so I have to use the 2 usb 2 ports. Very strange, I thought it was a Windows thing, but even in Linux and via the UEFI I have the problem, seemed to be after the last bios update.

dual USB?

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

dual USB?

A Flash drive with both USB-C and USB-A connectors so you chose which to use.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-Ultra-Type-C-Flash-...

I bought one of those some months ago for use in my car which has USB-C sockets. I returned it because when I was writing to it on my PC it got so hot that I could barely touch it.

Perhaps it was just a bad one but it put me off as I have never been aware of any overheating on any of the dozens of USB sticks I've had before or since.

p.s. just read a few reviews and excess heat is mentioned by several reviewers.

Edited by longedge (Tue 24-Aug-21 13:45:01)

Does seem to be an issue ... maybe I need to look at alternates.

Single one is £6.00 on Ebuyer. Just for comparison.

In reply to a post by MHC:

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

dual USB?

A Flash drive with both USB-C and USB-A connectors so you chose which to use.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-Ultra-Type-C-Flash-...

Ah, I see, Useful I suppose, but a bit more to go wrong with the sliding thing. I had one that slid in and out and I dumped it a couple of days ago as it was getting stiff, plus the plastic on the plug was cracking.

If as longedge say there is an over heating problem, then maybe best to avoid it, I have never known a flash drive to overheat, I presume there may be too much voltage going into the NAND or the controller chip.

I am still not sure about USB-c, they look flimsy to me.

In reply to a post by camieabz:

Single one is £6.00 on Ebuyer. Just for comparison.

Cheers, I already ordered them, should be here today and some lanyards. It is a good deal, but cheap, even £6 for a USB3 32GB flash drive

I did not realise the 32GB ones was ones that slide in, I hope they are ok, I should have looked closer.
The 16GB ones I got from Argos, one of them have, Sandisk as well, I copied some files on it, and it stopped after a few seconds, now it says it is read only, I had a muck around with disk part., but it seems the drive is bad. I will return them on Friday when I go back to work. Just hope the 32GB ones that are also Sandisk is better

Some of the cheaper USB 3 drives are also not capable of reaching the speeds that USB 3 should achieve. I have some Crucial 64GB USB 3.0 sticks that seemed a great bargain when I bought them. I use them for a weekly backup of important files on my system (including lots of small files which have a limited life-span so every weekly back-up includes a batch of deletions as well as additions).


I use FastCopy to control the back up. Last time I backed up the FastCopy log reports:

TotalRead = 572 MiB
TotalWrite = 572 MiB
TotalFiles = 2,496 (43)
TotalSkip = 10,450 MiB
SkipFiles = 21,218 (0)
TotalDel = 184 MiB
DelFiles = 1,623 (30)
TotalTime = 02:11:53
TransRate = 0.07 MiB/s
FileRate = 0.32 files/s

Over 2 hours to add 572MiB and delete 184MiB is not very inspiring. Running the same routine to my NAS takes less than 3 minutes.

I haven't touched Crucial products since around 2013/14 after an unexpected SSD failure, caused me a bit of havoc.

Sounds like your USB sticks are going the same way...low grade memory, that has block failure due to repeated overwrite cycles. Basically its cheap junk.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

I haven't touched Crucial products since around 2013/14 after an unexpected SSD failure, caused me a bit of havoc.

Sounds like your USB sticks are going the same way...low grade memory, that has block failure due to repeated overwrite cycles. Basically its cheap junk.

It used to be a standing joke in our family when my mother always told us "You've got to pay for quality". As ever a lot of wisdom from those who have learnt the hard way!

True enough. Samsung memory and SSD products, on the other hand I've got nothing but enormous praise for. Chalk and cheese.

[....mind they'll probably all fail tomorrow now, as I've invoked the name of Murphy 😎]

In reply to a post by GonePostal:

Some of the cheaper USB 3 drives are also not capable of reaching the speeds that USB 3 should achieve. I have some Crucial 64GB USB 3.0 sticks that seemed a great bargain when I bought them. I use them for a weekly backup of important files on my system (including lots of small files which have a limited life-span so every weekly back-up includes a batch of deletions as well as additions).


I use FastCopy to control the back up. Last time I backed up the FastCopy log reports:

TotalRead = 572 MiB
TotalWrite = 572 MiB
TotalFiles = 2,496 (43)
TotalSkip = 10,450 MiB
SkipFiles = 21,218 (0)
TotalDel = 184 MiB
DelFiles = 1,623 (30)
TotalTime = 02:11:53
TransRate = 0.07 MiB/s
FileRate = 0.32 files/s

Over 2 hours to add 572MiB and delete 184MiB is not very inspiring. Running the same routine to my NAS takes less than 3 minutes.

I am not really bothered about speed to be honest, which is why I went for the USB 2 one first, reliability is what I need. It is one of the USB 2 ones that have failed, and flipping quick, the first time I plugged it in and copied stuff.

The USB 3 ones, I am copying a load of stuff to them, just to make sure they are ok. they are only for back up anyway.


I have never heard of fast copy, I just downloaded it, I will try it out.

In reply to a post by GonePostal:

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

I haven't touched Crucial products since around 2013/14 after an unexpected SSD failure, caused me a bit of havoc.

Sounds like your USB sticks are going the same way...low grade memory, that has block failure due to repeated overwrite cycles. Basically its cheap junk.

It used to be a standing joke in our family when my mother always told us "You've got to pay for quality". As ever a lot of wisdom from those who have learnt the hard way!

That sometimes holds true, but not always, I got a load of stuff that is in the cheaper end of the market, my NAS for a start, is a terramaster, great for the price, sure it don't have all the functions of the more expensive ones, but it works for what I need it for. My TV is a hisense, works great,
Freezer a beko and so is the washing machine, both works fine, the cooker is a beko as well, but under the flavel name, almost 17 years old and still going strong,

To be honest, I have not really had many problems with flash drives or SD cards, I have a few 2GB micro SD cards that i can not read, but they were not mine, they came from someone else.

I was going to get SD cards instead of flash drives, easier to store and label, but the problem is not all machines have SD card readers.


A mate of mine told me years ago to avoid Sandisk as he always had problem with them, never had any myself with the could I have got. Not that I can find one of them.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

True enough. Samsung memory and SSD products, on the other hand I've got nothing but enormous praise for. Chalk and cheese.

[....mind they'll probably all fail tomorrow now, as I've invoked the name of Murphy 😎]

I have Corsair for SSD and memory, one of the drives in this machine is an old force 3 128GB drive, got to be getting on now and still fine, it was used as a scratch drive for video editing, but at the moment it has Windows 11 on.

Took the plunge and bought some Patriot Supersonic Rage USB 3.2 Gen. 1 64GB Flash Drives from Amazon which were about 3 times the price of the Sandisk drives. Using one of the SanDisk drives the log posted earlier shows 572MiB uploaded and 184MiB deleted, taking 02:11:53. Log for the same task with the new drive shows:

TotalRead = 513 MiB
TotalWrite = 513 MiB
TotalFiles = 1,960 (18)
TotalSkip = 10,541 MiB
SkipFiles = 21,189 (0)
TotalDel = 148 MiB
DelFiles = 1,928 (55)
TotalTime = 07:04
TransRate = 1.49 MiB/s
FileRate = 5.68 files/s

Bit of a difference in performance.

Edited by GonePostal (Sun 12-Sep-21 20:25:47)