USB pen/thumb drive quality

Peterius · 03-05-2009, 10:29 AM

Nevermind

Junior Hacker · 03-06-2009, 06:18 AM

There's an old saying...which still stands to this day:
You get what you pay for.
You want crap, throw some change, you want quality, get a loan.

H_TeXMeX_H · 03-06-2009, 07:24 AM

It definitely depends on price as to the quality of the USB stick.

However, you should also know that running an OS from a USB stick that writes to the stick often is not a good idea, this will wear out the drive in no time no matter how good it is.

I can recommend the following manufacturers (whose USB sticks have lasted a long time):
Sandisk, PNY, Imation, Corsair, PQI.

I recommend against Kingston and Transcend.

It also depends on luck.

linus72 · 03-06-2009, 07:44 AM

Well-I have 2 USB drives-a Kingston 2GB Data Traveler and a 4GB Data Traveler-and I have had 0 problems with both.
Both of these USB's go through hell and back on any given day!
I have installed/erased/re-formatted, etc each one hundreds of times in the last 3 months(since I started using Linux), and never a glitch!
I have reformatted them to fat16/fat32/ext3,etc, and repartitioned them a few times too.
I got both from a REPUTABLE Ebay seller-USA and both had full warranties(5years)-I got the 2GB for $10 and the 4GB was $20-shipping included.
I'm not saying Kingston is the best-just saying that's what I have and I haven't had any problems with them.
Having said that-if I really needed to keep important info on my USB-I would opt for a USB from Kingston/Sandisk/even PNY.
Really-it's what are you gonna use it for and know that any USB is gonna get trashed by continually deleting/writing info to it.
Good Luck!

beachboy2 · 03-06-2009, 08:28 AM

Peterius,
Don't mess about, get a 8GB Corsair Voyager for $22 at newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...emory%2c%20Inc.

There is a 10 year guarantee if that helps you to make up your mind. I have one myself and I can strongly recommend it for speed and reliability. Just look at the customer feedback and the numbers sold compared to rival products.
For desktop RAM I never use any other brand but Corsair with its lifetime guarantee.
As somebody said earlier, you get what you pay for.

The 4GB version has been deactivated although a Mini version is still listed.

Peterius · 03-06-2009, 12:48 PM

Nevermind

H_TeXMeX_H · 03-06-2009, 01:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peterius

TexMex says that you shouldn't run an OS off of a usb stick that's writable. But then I kind of wonder what the point is? I mean of "livecd" usb sticks. I've heard that flash lasts for 1 million writes... I don't know if that's like some 512 byte block or if its 1 bit. But it seems then like running an OS off of a usb stick might last for something like three years? Assuming there's nothing wrong with the stick to start with? Is this reasonable?

The thing is, I kind of want to try another distribution and I have a fast windows computer I use for gaming, but no hard disk space. I was also considering using a ramdisk as well which presumably would cut down on io, and then there's also the question of what happens when you use such an OS on a usb stick on multiple computers, like whether the hardware confuses settings files, etc..

Not 1 million, more like 100,000 on most drives.

As for HDD space, that's a (very) sorry excuse. HDD space is WAY cheaper than USB flash drive space.

Peterius · 03-07-2009, 02:24 PM

Nevermind

H_TeXMeX_H · 03-07-2009, 03:11 PM

If you really wanted to I would instead recommend using a live CD or DVD and saving settings to external media such as a USB stick, that would cut down on wear a lot.

Junior Hacker · 03-08-2009, 01:44 AM

Good one Tex
Gave you a thumbs up, everybody loves brownie points....that is, except for me.

H_TeXMeX_H · 03-08-2009, 04:13 AM

No problem, also know that several distros have this ability built-in, see here:
http://www.linuxfortravelers.com/ubu...to-thumb-drive

tredegar · 03-08-2009, 06:55 AM

Quote:

Not 1 million, more like 100,000 on most drives.

When the Asus eee pc first came out, people were worried about "wearing out" its solid state drive.
There were some interesting discussions on the eee forums, resulting in this synopsis:
http://wiki.eeeuser.com/ssd_write_limit
The bottom-line is "don't worry about it"!