Decent USB Flash Drives

[LunarMist]

I'm looking to buy about 15 or so 8GB USB 2.0 flaeh drives. Which model would you buy that is not too expensive (<$20) but decently constructed and reasonably reliable for writes? I'm paying for these out of pocket so no ridiculous suggestions, please. Thanks.

 

[ddrueding]

I have had luck with the Patriot Minis. Not the fastest, but small, durable, and I haven't had one go bad yet.

If sheer performance is what you are after, I'd get the Flash Voyager.

 

[LunarMist]

That first drive reminds me of one of Sheila's vibrators.

 

[ddrueding]

Indeed. But it doesn't vibrate...as far as I know. The size and rubbery nature of it's wrapping makes it very durable.

 

[Stereodude]

That first drive reminds me of one of Sheila's vibrators.

Who is Sheila and why are you familiar with her Vibrators?

 

[LunarMist]

Who is Sheila and why are you familiar with her Vibrators?

 

[time]

Ddrueding, you mean the Voyager GT. The garden variety Voyager is as slow as a wet week.

Comparison of 16GB flash drives

Includes small and large file writes, and durability testing. You can read the notes by scrolling the table, and how they tested by jumping to the next page.

Corsair continues to be off my list after reading that. I think Transcend looks like the safest bet. If you can believe Transcend's published specs (are they the only manufacturer to publish estimated read and write throughput, and for each size of each model to boot? Looks like they're conservative as well!), the tested V70 is typical for the non-performance models in their range, so a 535 slider model ought to be just as good, and is cheap as chips.

For something with a lot more speed, there's the JetFlash 600 or the 620 equivalent. I seriously doubt that anyone can top that.

 

[time]

Scratch that, you can buy the JetFlash 700 for $20 or less. It's USB 3.0 and claims 20MB/s writes and 70MB/s reads.

A no-brainer in my book.

 

[LunarMist]

Ddrueding, you mean the Voyager GT. The garden variety Voyager is as slow as a wet week.

Yeah, that looks like it might have 3BPC flash.

 

[Adcadet]

If sheer performance is what you are after, I'd get the Flash Voyager.

I have this drive and am happy with it.

 

[CougTek]

Scratch that, you can buy the JetFlash 700 for $20 or less. It's USB 3.0 and claims 20MB/s writes and 70MB/s reads.

The speed you wrote is for the 16GB model. The 8GB reads at up to 53MBps and writes at up to 15MBps. It's very good for the asked price anyway.

 

[time]

Damn, you're right! After carefully looking through endless models, I dropped the ball in my excitement at finding a USB 3.0 drive for <$20. The common theme is that you need at least 16GB for high write performance.

Incidentally, I automatically look at the worst aspect of flash drive performance, because that's where I'll notice how slow it is. That's going to be writes, and writing small files in particular.

Previously, Ddrueding (?) has pointed out that there are situations where you might store something on a flash drive, then read it multiple times to install on multiple PCs, for example. In that case, drives like the Corsair Voyager would be just fine, for USB 2.0 anyway.

 

[Mercutio]

I find that there's a lot of variability even between drives that are theoretically the same model from the same manufacturer. I bought a dozen 4GB PNY Attache drives that I use for OS installation media and I've observed that some of them consistently install Windows 7 more slowly than others. I haven't gotten off my ass to do read speed tests, but if I'm seeing a ~90 second difference in the amount of time it takes to copy the install image to a hard drive on identical hardware, that's definitely meaningful.

 

[LunarMist]

I suspect many are going to 3BPC from 2BPC and the less reliable flash memory is mfg. at the newish 2X nm process.

 

[LunarMist]

Indeed. But it doesn't vibrate...as far as I know. The size and rubbery nature of it's wrapping makes it very durable.

Are there any other colors? I guess most people won't mind too much, but still...

 

[ddrueding]

i think the different capacities are different colors.

 

[LunarMist]

i think the different capacities are different colors.

Maybe, but I don't know what they mean. It's not like the resistor color code I learned in elementary school.

 

[Sol]

Maybe, but I don't know what they mean. It's not like the resistor color code I learned in elementary school.

'Could be... How many ohms in a gigabyte?

 

[LunarMist]

'Could be... How many ohms in a gigabyte?

The units are not the issue.

 

[ddrueding]

An old roommate had a big yellow sign on the door to his office:

"Warning: 10,000 Ohms"

I thought it was funny.

 

[LunarMist]

It should have been a brn-blk-orn sign.