(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

I thought it might be a public service to list the USB drives that have been reliable for me and others that have not:

PNY USB Drives: No failures. Case quality is sometimes poor (the small red and blue almost square ones). I can't tell you how many times the plastic casing comes off and I have to use pliers to get this out of my USB port. I recommend the smaller metal casing when you buy the PNY brand. There's a small hook for a keychain if you choose, as well. No failures or other issues with the PNY drives. I make them bootable, as well. No probs. - My first choice.

Gigaware (I think it's Radio Shack Brand): Only used one Gigaware USB drive but it works like a charm. Never had an issue. The casing is good, it hasn't failed and the casing is good. I haven't used to boot.

Lexar: I have one that I haven't had any issues with this one. It folds into its casing and has provided reliable storage.

Sandisk: I used to purchase many of these but I found the quality to be hit or miss. I have personally lost data on at least 2 Sandisk drives that I have not been able to recover. Though one of the most common to find near me, I won't touch one again except in extreme emergency.

Dane: In my opinion, pure garbage. I purchased 2 at the same time and one did not work. The other was not reliable and eventually died, as well.

Also, it seems to me that the larger the USB drive, the more likely there is to be problems. I try to stick with the 4 GB or 8 GB. If you're going to go much more, you might as well purchase a WD Passport drive. I have an external WD Passport (external) and it's been very reliable.

How about these Brands...

Transcend excellant SDHC still sells SLC CF cards usb OK
Patriot Last of the X-Mini is gone... very good
SanDisk new micro-sized usb's look popular and v. good
Kingston over-priced but v. good

I note that with the newest and smallest (micro) "Thumb-drives" that one should not maximize the storage: that is don't go for 32Gb or more... keep it 8/16 Gb.

I notice that on some of the recent SanDisk flash drives, like the Cruzer Blade, the rectangular plug shell isn't made of aluminum, instead it's plastic. Aside from being more likely to break, there is more friction with plastic than with aluminum, making it harder to insert and remove these drives from a sticky USB port. More fragile and stickier--not a good combination.

ThoriumBlvd wrote:How about these Brands...
Transcend excellant SDHC still sells SLC CF cards usb OK ...

I've had a transcend 32Gb "jetflash" USB plugged into a home security system for 3 years : during that period it is being written to 24/7 and is still working fine.

I've had two lexar gone bad on me.

Coincidence? perhaps? well I dont buy them anymore

I have never had a transcend fail me. USB flash drives from 64Mb (whenever that was!) up to the present 8,16, and 32 Gb. Still using the 64Mb and a 128Mb as archives and have given away a lot of the intermediate sizes as I've updated mine. Also have used transcend CF cards as main drives in ide adapters, from the 80x 256Mb up through the 4, 8, 16, and 32Gb CF150 and CF160 industrials which I love. These get hammered and again I've never had one fail. And nope, I don't work for transcend

Thanks for all the input. I can see we all have had some experiences (good and bad) with USB drives. I only used one Lexar and had no issue with it but judging by the post above, I think that I'll stay away from the Lexar brand in the future.

For the record, I also do not work for any of the companies listed or any computer related company for that matter.

I see a few brands in the posts that I haven't seen on the local store shelves. I also keep cost in mind, so at least for now the PNY still seem very good for the price.

Best regards,

Slavvo67

Just for the record I have four Lexar flash drives, and all are running fine. In fact, I have had three of them for five years and they have all had heavy use.

slavvo67, this is an interesting topic and could provide some useful information. Toward this end, it would be better to get a good sample response from the community. Consider conducting a poll of the membership to get some data about which brands of usb drives have failed for them. Then, you could analyze and table the results. If your poll is clear and well worded, and you get a decent response from the community (sample size) you might be able to draw some meaningful conclusions.

Monsie

Id avoid WD drives got a 2T model and it hard died witbout warning. Stripped it from surround and checked inside SATA drive clicks but shows zero. Lost over a year of family backups ( hard drive images taken before major upgrades for many of our computer ) the only remaining WD 700G model micro freezes often but shows no errors itself when checked but does cause windows to treat it as bad. I only place files I do not care as much about on a media server.
Found the hard way DDing on to flash is a guarantee to speed failure of device, and I the case of a new 32G flashdrive permanent slowdown.

No issues with Seagate or Toshiba brands
As flash drives I just buy as needed or if at high discounts. I have less then successful using flashdrives due to SLOW speeds. Still have a plexer 256M flashdrive bare board lost cheap plasitic case years ago..
Best one so far I got from an Car repair place to use for music on car stereo.. Its brand called SCOSCHE

I had a verbatim flash drive. I am going to say this, it just sucks.

Well, if nothing else I think we all learned that we need to back-up these drives. Personally, I don't trust keeping anything important in the cloud so I guess that I'll just keep buying hardware and backing things up......

I exclusively use Kingston se9 flash drives now -


My pc will not run properly from sata anymore so I run puppy on these sticks, changed every six months. They aren't the fastest but are reliable and tough. I always backup to dvds as ive lost too much data on hard disks!

slavvo67 wrote: PNY USB Drives: No failures. Case quality is sometimes poor (the small red and blue almost square ones). I can't tell you how many times the plastic casing comes off and I have to use pliers to get this out of my USB port. I recommend the smaller metal casing when you buy the PNY brand. There's a small hook for a keychain if you choose, as well. No failures or other issues with the PNY drives. I make them bootable, as well. No probs. - My first choice.

I agree, although I haven't had too many problems with the cases...the cover on one (of the three I've owned) broke off. Otherwise, yes, they seem to be a very good brand.

@bark_bark_bark: What problems did you have with your verbatim drive?

Regards...

Kingston is my go to brand. I do use plenty of no-name ones that I may have received for free, usually for testing or other not-that-important stuff.

And I specifically avoid SanDisk. They seem to do something with firmware or partitioning that is intended to leave "persistent" guides for a consumer on the disk, but it just messes stuff up.

I agree with Headfound, those wee aluminum drives are awesome.

ardvark wrote:What problems did you have with your verbatim drive?

The drive stopped working after 2 weeks.

You have to be careful where you purchase usb drives as well. Avoid buying them on ebay. There are fakes being sold and ebay tends to cater to their China import dollar store type sellers. Fake Kingston usb drives are more the norm on ebay than the exception.

One particularly bad seller there is grindlogic, in Austin, TX. The terms of sale for that store is 15% restocking fee plus original shipping cost deducted from refunds, and return shipping is at the seller's expense. On a $10-15 item the refund amount will be less than half the purchase price. The store will refuse to honor returns except under those conditions, so the buyer has to open a dispute which ebay automatically decides in favor of the store. This solution keeps a buyer from being able to leave negative feedback for the transaction.

Amazon is a much better source, with a great return policy, and quick refunds. I now use ebay only for used legacy parts and computers. New low cost items are much more safely purchased on Amazon than on ebay.

yep agree about.Amazon. Plus the reviews of product are not overly filtered for bad reviews. Fake products are slammed hard and generally disappear from listing after a few months. You do have to forget the first couple of fake positive reviews by plants..
The return policies are enforced by product categories and some are not returnable or refundable. I ve seem to hit those exceptions more often then most..

Amazon's prime deal also lets me get free 2nd day shipping for a year for about $80usd. Since I live 22 miles from the nearest small town and over an hour's drive to any city, Amazon and ebay have been my main sources for tech stuff for years.

On the subject of usb drives, I just got a Silicon Power 16G Firma 80 flash drive from amazon for $9.99 usd. Haven't used it yet, but I'll report back on it once I've tried it out and used it for awhile.

SP reviewers on amazon said that it's a very fast drive. We'll see.

Im bummed by Amazon prime video playback no longer supported by linux..And Im thinking of dropping prime altogether. Amazon opened a regional distribution center a mile from a family members house. Reports of less than a day delivery, are becoming widespread by the locals.
The new aircraft hanger like building is two or more blocks long and a few hundred feet from Regional FedEx hub..
I called and asked if I could pickup orders directly since the nearest mall is twice as far and the short cut to that mall is at Amazon front door, if they had a front door which it does not from main road.
I even volunteered to get a small item drone delivered... That was shot down and learned it was just a publicly stunt.

I know we're going a bit off topic but I agree. Recently, Prime has been quietly moving videos from Amazon Prime back to pay without notice. Very very disappointing.