(Un)reliability of USB pen drives

[MrComputerSaint]

I love the Sandisk Cruzer blade USB devices. They've never failed me.

[ik9000]

I love the Sandisk Cruzer blade USB devices. They've never failed me.

I have some of these too - they're fine.

[Giraffe]

Damn - 7Day has Cruzer only in USB 2. Really, it's about time these sites updated their products.

Any reliable suppliers to recommend, please? After comments above, I'm reluctant to trust ebay/Amazon for such things.

Edit: I'm beginning to wonder if the Cruzer Blade is available only as USB 2. Sandisk's site is rubbish - over-refined and no Search box.

[snedger]

Damn - 7Day has Cruzer only in USB 2. Really, it's about time these sites updated their products.

Any reliable suppliers to recommend, please? After comments above, I'm reluctant to trust ebay/Amazon for such things.

Argos is convenient if you have to have it same day and sometimes USB sticks are on offer.
I would only buy fulfilled by Amazon - would never trust unknown Amazon sellers for electronics or electricals.

[GoNz0]

Beanz?

GonZ0 - just spotted that you are in Derby - having a lovely week visiting your fine city on a course - unfortunately not residential. Off to Seven for lunch again today - a hidden gem me thinks.

Not a bad place, I'm out of the city fortunately, some great cycle routes

Thanks for this. It told me that RO had been cleared then the next command said that it was WP!

I'll destroy it now. One problem with data on this medium is that it can't be removed/overwritten/formatted and it mustn't escape!

WILL IT BLEND!!!!!!!!!!!

[ik9000]

Argos is convenient if you have to have it same day and sometimes USB sticks are on offer.
I would only buy fulfilled by Amazon - would never trust unknown Amazon sellers for electronics or electricals.

high st: John Lewis or Curry's are fine - and I got a bargain at Currys on 16GB Sandisk pen drives a few months back.
online: Amazon, ebuyer, Scan, Aria

[Giraffe]

Thanks - I've looked at all of the usual places.
It does seem that Cruzer Blade is USB 2 only. On Amazon, there are a lot of reviews mentioning the mechanical flimsiness and high temperatures of Sandisk.
I think that I'll get some Corsair Flash Voyager - I have an old one that was bought when 1GB was big!
https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/USB-Flash...ds=corsair+usb

[Kumagoro]

If you want quick then I would recommend SanDisk extreme

https://uk.camelcamelcamel.com/SanDi...context=search

There is a new version with go appended but I don't know how quick they are.I would expect them to be good too but you can never tell with USB sticks.

The extreme ones I have have far better 4k rates than any other supposedly fast ones I have seen. The others always seem good sequentially and that is it. It's about 10 MB/s for 4k, others are under a MB/s even if they have comparable sequential.

[GoNz0]

If you want quick then I would recommend SanDisk extreme

https://uk.camelcamelcamel.com/SanDi...context=search

There is a new version with go appended but I don't know how quick they are.I would expect them to be good too but you can never tell with USB sticks.

The extreme ones I have have far better 4k rates than any other sponsored fat one I have seen. The others always seem good sequentially and that is it. It's about 10 MB/s for 4k, others are under a MB/s even if they have comparable sequential.

Windows installs in minutes with one of those!
I love mine.

[Giraffe]

The Go ones don't seem to be as quick but the (only 8 so far) reviews seem favourable, especially re. robustness, although they do mention that it's too long.
I looked for Amazon as 'seller' and there's this:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-Ext...isk+Extreme+Go

Not too bad for 64GB - more than most but a bit less than the Extreme.
When I'm free of appointments I'll get some on order. There's a chance that the collection point is abouyt 150 yd. from my favourite pub

[Kumagoro]

If you do get a SanDisk extreme go, a crystal disk mark showing all the 4k measures would be much appreciated.

[Giraffe]

OK, will do.

[ik9000]

I have two of the 16GB USB3 extremes. They're fine - nice and speedy. I would run tests on them but they are housing system images atm.

[Kumagoro]

It's the new go versions I am curious about. From a quick Google there doesn't seen to be any benchmark.

I have x2 64 GB and a 32 GB of the old extremes and I can't recommend them enough. They really should get more exposure for how much quicker they are than anything else.

[Giraffe]

If you do get a SanDisk extreme go, a crystal disk mark showing all the 4k measures would be much appreciated.

Here are some figures:

NTFS
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 5.2.0 (C) 2007-2016 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes

Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 160.520 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 21.601 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 7.009 MB/s [ 1711.2 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 1.095 MB/s [ 267.3 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 132.132 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 20.761 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 5.628 MB/s [ 1374.0 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 1.081 MB/s [ 263.9 IOPS]

Test : 4096 MiB [F: 0.2% (0.1/58.4 GiB)] (x1) [Interval=5 sec]
Date : 2017/04/16 8:58:28
OS : Windows 7 Professional SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x86)

exFAT
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 5.2.0 (C) 2007-2016 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes

Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 155.767 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 41.633 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 6.941 MB/s [ 1694.6 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 1.119 MB/s [ 273.2 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 149.746 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 40.266 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 6.279 MB/s [ 1533.0 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 1.076 MB/s [ 262.7 IOPS]

Test : 4096 MiB [F: 0.3% (0.2/58.4 GiB)] (x1) [Interval=5 sec]
Date : 2017/04/16 8:32:41
OS : Windows 7 Professional SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x86)

[peterb]

The Lexar P20 range seem pretty speedy, I've used a 32Gb one with good results.