USB 3.0 Flash drive suggestions

[ratdude747]

Now that I have a laptop with USB 3.0, I now want a flash drive that supports it... but I want to do it right.

I'm thinking smaller size and under $30... and durability and an activity LED are pluses.

So speed and space wise, with decent build quality, what's my best bang for buck?

[shovenose]

Re: USB 3.0 Flash drive suggestions

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820220654

[ratdude747]

Re: USB 3.0 Flash drive suggestions

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820220654

nah, that series has too many rubber casing failure reports.

[Per Hansson]

Re: USB 3.0 Flash drive suggestions

I use this one, works fine

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820171647

[cheapie]

Re: USB 3.0 Flash drive suggestions

I just hot-swap SATA hard drives...

[kc8adu]

Re: USB 3.0 Flash drive suggestions

the rubber cased corsairs are junk too.
the metal ones are ok so far(knocks on wood)
my business partner just had a rubber one die AGAIN!

[ratdude747]

Re: USB 3.0 Flash drive suggestions

Ended up getting a patriot supersonic express. 16gb was out of stock at fry's so I got an 8gb for $9.99.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: USB 3.0 Flash drive suggestions

Please post some benchies, write speeds especially. I bought a Verico 8GB USB 3.0 flash drive off ebay a few months ago, and while read is pretty respectable, write speeds are much lower than my Adata 007 USB 2.0 16GB drive, which is still the fastest flash drive i own, and the fastest i've seen among all my friends. I would recommend it to anyone.

Do note that the rubber cap on the Adata easily gets lost (i lost mine last year, cat played with it and hid it god knows where), and there are reports of them failing on newegg. I've had mine for 2 years, used and abused and still going great, but YMMV. Adata remains my favorite memory company.

[ratdude747]

Re: USB 3.0 Flash drive suggestions

IIRC adata uses b-grade reject chips... or they did 2 years ago afaik.

[c_hegge]

Re: USB 3.0 Flash drive suggestions

We had a Kingston datatraveler USB3 flash flash drive at work. It didn't even last 1 year. It's been my only disappointment with Kingston. I've used their USB2 flash drives a lot, and I use Kingston RAM on all of the new PCs I build and had no problems.

[ratdude747]

Re: USB 3.0 Flash drive suggestions

Please post some benchies, write speeds especially. I bought a Verico 8GB USB 3.0 flash drive off ebay a few months ago, and while read is pretty respectable, write speeds are much lower than my Adata 007 USB 2.0 16GB drive, which is still the fastest flash drive i own, and the fastest i've seen among all my friends. I would recommend it to anyone.

Do note that the rubber cap on the Adata easily gets lost (i lost mine last year, cat played with it and hid it god knows where), and there are reports of them failing on newegg. I've had mine for 2 years, used and abused and still going great, but YMMV. Adata remains my favorite memory company.

Once the upload system is fixed, I'll upload screenshots. For now, here's some averages:

(under arch linux using the gnome "disks" tool's benchmark utility, 100 10MiB tests, no file system)

USB 3: 76.8MB/s Read, 4.2MB/s Write, 0.51msec access (1000 samples). Write had an initial 30MB/s ish peak at the first write test, followed by consistent 4.2ish speeds. Read speeds were consistent.

USB2.0: 39.0MB/s read, 4.3MB/s write, 0.78msec access (1000 samples). Same 30MB/s peak story as with USB3. Read speeds were also consistent.

The peak write thing is WEIRD... umm...

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: USB 3.0 Flash drive suggestions

No, the consistent 4.2MB/sec write thing is weird. Seems too low to me. About the same for the Verico drive that i have... it's got around 4-6.5MB/sec writes, in real-world file copying situations. The Adata is more like 7-13MB/s write and 25-32MB/s read.

[ratdude747]

Re: USB 3.0 Flash drive suggestions

No, the consistent 4.2MB/sec write thing is weird. Seems too low to me. About the same for the Verico drive that i have... it's got around 4-6.5MB/sec writes, in real-world file copying situations. The Adata is more like 7-13MB/s write and 25-32MB/s read.

Checked it again on the win 7 install, using 50Mib (smallest crystaldisk supports) and with NTFS it's about the same, 5.235MB/s (sequential, 5 tests) ... Given that it's spec'd for up to 10 MiB/s write (or so newegg says), did I get a dud?