Best USB Flash Drives and External SSDs

PerpetualCycle · Jan 16, 2022

Haydon said:
Well, I tossed out USB sticks as young as 3 years young when I have heavily used it, and I tossed them out although there was no indication at all of any impending loss of data. On the other hand, I keep some USB sticks that are certainly older than 10 years if I have rarely used it.

I wish that there was more science to 'when to keep a USB stick or not' and less gut feeling of 'yes, my data is still there' if there can be such gut feeling at all, see the following.

What triggered my paranoia in this regard was a forgotten USB stick in a shirt pocket. It survived the laundry cycle, and I used it for another year or so with no problem, but it suddenly died one day

The one I mentioned, and I expect others, support SMART. On CrystalDiskInfo it shows reallocated sector count, Power Cycle Count, and 4 unspecified Vendor Specific values. The first two should be enough to determine health. Anyhow, my point is USB sticks are getting there.

Ghot · Jan 16, 2022

@geneo

Haydon · Jan 17, 2022

The SiliconMotion SM3282 is a Portable SSD Controller Solution for manufacturers of SSDs (and perhaps for manufacturers of USB flash drives) but it is itself not a USB flash drive with UASP support.

https://www.siliconmotion.com/download/p/a/SM3282_PB_EN_201910.pdf

The specifications of the USB flash drive Corsair Voyager GTX do not mention any UASP support, although it uses an SSD controller.

https://www.corsair.com/ww/en/Categories/Products/Storage/USB-Drives/flash-voyager-gtx-config/p/CMFVYGTX3B-256GB#tab-overview

I could not locate any suppliers for USB flash drives with UASP support either, i.e. USB flash drives that appear in File Explorer as SCSI HDDs and thus can be used as components in Storage Spaces.

@geneo or @Ghot or others, any links?

CountMike · Jan 17, 2022

Haydon said:
Well, I tossed out USB sticks as young as 3 years young when I have heavily used it, and I tossed them out although there was no indication at all of any impending loss of data. On the other hand, I keep some USB sticks that are certainly older than 10 years if I have rarely used it.

I wish that there was more science to 'when to keep a USB stick or not' and less gut feeling of 'yes, my data is still there' if there can be such gut feeling at all, see the following.

What triggered my paranoia in this regard was a forgotten USB stick in a shirt pocket. It survived the laundry cycle, and I used it for another year or so with no problem, but it suddenly died one day

Unless physically or electrically damaged, most often error is inability to write on them or format but it turns to read only.

no1yak · Jan 17, 2022

I use a Samaung T7 1TB for my backups with MR. Backup is around 839Mbps in MR ver 8.

PerpetualCycle · Jan 19, 2022

Haydon said:
USB/SSD controller all in one. First of its kind I think.

Haydon said:
The SiliconMotion SM3282 is a Portable SSD Controller Solution for manufacturers of SSDs (and perhaps for manufacturers of USB flash drives) but it is itself not a USB flash drive with UASP support.

https://www.siliconmotion.com/download/p/a/SM3282_PB_EN_201910.pdf

The specifications of the USB flash drive Corsair Voyager GTX do not mention any UASP support, although it uses an SSD controller.

https://www.corsair.com/ww/en/Categories/Products/Storage/USB-Drives/flash-voyager-gtx-config/p/CMFVYGTX3B-256GB#tab-overview

I could not locate any suppliers for USB flash drives with UASP support either, i.e. USB flash drives that appear in File Explorer as SCSI HDDs and thus can be used as components in Storage Spaces.

@geneo or @Ghot or others, any links?

You provided It yourself. It says right in the siliconmotion SM3282 data sheet link you provided that the protocol is UASP. It is UASP/USB/SSD controller all rolled into one chip. First of its kind I think.

It also says it is UASP in the crystaldiskinfo screenshot I posted and it shows up as SCSI disk in devices.

Haydon · Jan 19, 2022

geneo said:
You provided It yourself. It says right in the siliconmotion SM3282 data sheet link you provided that the protocol is UASP. It is UASP/USB/SSD controller all rolled into one chip. First of its kind I think.

It also says it is UASP in the crystaldiskinfo screenshot I posted and it shows up as SCSI disk in devices.

@geneo you had 2 quotes allegedly both mine. There are 2 problems with the 2 quotes.

Tne first problem with the first quote "USB/SSD controller all in one. First of its kind I think" is that the quote does not come from me at all, I never wrote that.

The second problem with the second quote is that the SM3282 is an SSD controller chip, NOT a USB flash drive as I wrote in my previous post, read the specifications carefully:

https://www.siliconmotion.com/download/p/a/SM3282_PB_EN_201910.pdf

The SM3282 SSD controller chip may provide UASP support, but without a USB flash drive it is NOT a USB flash drive with UASP support.

It looks like that by the time everything comes together as something that the OS recognizes as a SCSI HDD, it won't be a small and inexpensive USB flash drive anymore, it will be a bulky and expensive SSD.

BTW, I am aware of a hack that makes a USB flash drive looks like an HDD (google it) but that is not something that I want to entrust my data to.

For reference, I attach the screenshot below. The first quote is something that I never wrote.

hsehestedt · Jan 19, 2022

Back when "Windows to Go" was a thing, there were USB sticks that met the requirements for high read / write loads, and the durability to run an OS from. These drives also appeared to the system like an external HDD and not a removable disk as a standard USB stick does.

Windows News and Insights | Microsoft 365 Blog

Get the latest product updates for Windows , along with helpful tips to make sure you get the most out of your experience.

www.microsoft.com

Ghot · Jan 19, 2022

@Haydon
@geneo

From up above...

And this may help... ??

Haydon · Jan 19, 2022

hsehestedt said:
Back when "Windows to Go" was a thing, there were USB sticks that met the requirements for high read / write loads, and the durability to run an OS from. These drives also appeared to the system like an external HDD and not a removable disk as a standard USB stick does.

That 'Windows to Go' thingie had a USB connector but the inside is everything else but a USB flash drive, it is a complete computer with a USB interface.
=============
@Ghot As I wrote in the above, your USB flash drive has an SSD controller (hence it is so fast) but it does not have UASP support, at least according to the specifications, and that's what your screenshots appear to show also.

Ghot · Jan 19, 2022

Haydon said:
That 'Windows to Go' thingie had a USB connector but the inside is everything else but a USB flash drive, it is a complete computer with a USB interface.
=============
@Ghot As I wrote in the above, your USB flash drive has an SSD controller (hence it is so fast) but it does not have UASP support, at least according to the specifications, and that's what your screenshots appear to show also.

That's why I listed the controller.
You keep mentioning "other" controllers, but not the tone it actually has.
File Explorer and AIDA64, both see it as a disk

The fact that Corsair doesn't mention it, yea or nay... doesn't really mean anything.
I've seen no proof... just supposition.

Haydon · Jan 19, 2022

@Ghot Can you look whether Storage Spaces will accept your USB flash drive as a component? Thanks!

If so, and if it is USB flash drive prices rather than SSD prices, then I would be interested in buying a pair, for a mirror configuration in Storage Spaces. Ideally, you would have a pair and could do the experiment

Ghot · Jan 19, 2022

Haydon said:
@Ghot Can you look whether Storage Spaces will accept your USB flash drive as a component? Thanks!

If so, and if it is USB flash drive prices rather than SSD prices, then I would be interested in buying a pair, for a mirror configuration in Storage Spaces. Ideally, you would have a pair and could do the experiment

I'm on Windows 10 at the moment. This flash drive comes in up to 1TB sizes.
I've never used Storage Spaces... but it lets me check mark the box and then take it offline.
The flash drive is empty right now and formatted NTFS.

Amazon.com

Here is a discussion @Ed Tittel and I had about this flash drive??

Fast little USB thumb drive. - Windows 10 Help Forums

Just got one of these. It arrived today. Macrium Reflect accepts it as a place to save a backup. My backups are about 16GB, so I tested it's speed at defaults and for 16GB sized files. Pretty fast.

www.tenforums.com

Haydon · Jan 19, 2022

Thanks, @Ghot! But the issue is moot, your USB flash drive is more expensive than an SSD! Here are the prices that I found on Amazon. Note that I need to buy a pair to achieve the same GB in a mirror configuration

hsehestedt · Jan 19, 2022

Haydon said:
That 'Windows to Go' thingie had a USB connector but the inside is everything else but a USB flash drive, it is a complete computer with a USB interface.

Not true. Windows to Go was a Windows software feature for Enterprise versions on Windows that allowed you to deploy a standalone copy of Windows to a flash drive. What you plugged into the USD port was NOT a self contained PC, it was merely flash storage, although it was storage that was quick and durable. Windows to Go was discontinued as of Windows 10 2004.

Windows To Go feature overview (Windows 10) - Windows 10

Windows To Go is a feature in Windows 10 Enterprise and Windows 10 Education that lets you create a workspace that can be booted from a USB-connected drive.

docs.microsoft.com

hsehestedt · Jan 19, 2022

So long as the flash drive in question presents itself as a HDD rather than removable storage, it will work with Storage Spaces.

One simple way to determine this is to look at volume details in Diskpart. If it indicates "Removable" then Storage Spaces will not accept it.

PerpetualCycle · Jan 19, 2022

Haydon said:
@geneo you had 2 quotes allegedly both mine. There are 2 problems with the 2 quotes.

Tne first problem with the first quote "USB/SSD controller all in one. First of its kind I think" is that the quote does not come from me at all, I never wrote that.

The second problem with the second quote is that the SM3282 is an SSD controller chip, NOT a USB flash drive as I wrote in my previous post, read the specifications carefully:

https://www.siliconmotion.com/download/p/a/SM3282_PB_EN_201910.pdf

The SM3282 SSD controller chip may provide UASP support, but without a USB flash drive it is NOT a USB flash drive with UASP support.

It looks like that by the time everything comes together as something that the OS recognizes as a SCSI HDD, it won't be a small and inexpensive USB flash drive anymore, it will be a bulky and expensive SSD.

BTW, I am aware of a hack that makes a USB flash drive looks like an HDD (google it) but that is not something that I want to entrust my data to.

For reference, I attach the screenshot below. The first quote is something that I never wrote.

View attachment 19095

I replied from my phone and was having some difficulty. A problem with the reply form in this forum is that if you backspace your reply enough, it will end up in the quote field of who you are replying to, and the only way you can get rid of it then is delete the whole thing. I had thought I did. So it was unintentional.

The SM3282 was designed for UASP USB sticks - having all of those functions on a single small chip enables it to fit into a USB stick form factor. The cyrstaldiskinfo screenshot I posted is for the 512GB Patriot Supersonic rage pro UASP USB stick that I posted earlier, which uses the SM3282 controller. It shows up in crystaldiskinfo as a UASP "SiliconMotion SM3282", that is why I posted it. From the cyrstaldiskinfo screenshot I posted of it, it is UASP and support TRIM, SMART and NCQ.

This thumb drive is $75 on Amazon. These "SSD on a stc" may not be priced as well as SSD, - you are paying for their unique size.

I don't think it is a good idea to use USB sticks in a redundant RAID configuration. RAID is intended to have all of its disks available all of the time unless there is a failure of one.

Just a FYI, here is the size of an SM3282 chip on a USB stick:

A USB Stick as an SSD? A New Silicon Motion SM3282 Single-Chip Controller for USB SSDs

www.anandtech.com

And again the size of the Patriot Supersonic rage pro 512GB that uses this:

PerpetualCycle · Jan 19, 2022

BTW, pretty much leaving these forum for a while. Just didn't want to leave this dangling. If you have any questions PM me.

Ghot · Jan 19, 2022

Haydon said:
Thanks, @Ghot! But the issue is moot, your USB flash drive is more expensive than an SSD! Here are the prices that I found on Amazon. Note that I need to buy a pair to achieve the same GB in a mirror configuration

View attachment 19112

Well, yeah.
Gotta spend the big bux when they make the stuff small.

The ratio works the same when you get even larger. 4TB WD Black $124.99

Wynona · Jan 19, 2022

Slavic said:
You definitely are not a potential buyer or upgrader because your last laptop already has the 11 gen CPU. But otherwise waiting a couple of months would be reasonable. And I completely agree that every tech in our world will be outdated soon or later. But should we wait indefinitely?

For example, initially I didn't suppose to buy current i7-12700K with motherboard, hoping to skip Alder Lake and waiting for next Raptor Lake because some new components are not yet mature or are too expensive, e.g. PCIe 5.0 and DDR5 RAM. But extrapolating in the future, I realised that my previous Skylake will be critically outdated when Raptor Lake arrives, so waiting is unreasonable. As a result, I used current DDR4 RAM and SSD (eventually replaced SSD a few days ago) and upgraded only CPU and motherboard, a partial solution which allows to buy more time. Now I think to skip Raptor and wait for next gen (14 or 15). But it's a desktop PC, laptop owners are more limited in upgradeability, so need to buy a device with good planned lifetime. You already have it.

I got lucky in that my main desktop computer has a 10th Gen i7 processor and is fully 11 capable. So is my teaching machine at the Senior Center. Add to that, my laptop is fully capable also.

For me, there is no reason to run out and get a machine with Windows 11 preinstalled. They are all dual boot machines for whatever comes in the next few years.

Best USB Flash Drives and External SSDs

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