I think USB thumb drives are dying as a category. It's been a few years since I used one. All my files are online (Synology), important ones are backed up to Google Drive. All movies, shows, music, etc are one google search and two clicks away.
Remember that Google Drive (etc) aren't backup solutions, but file mirroring solutions. If you screw up a file on one computer, it will happily mirror it to every other computer. I use Windows File History, GDrive and Backblaze to make sure my massive photo library doesn't spontaneously blow up.
I've basically given up on these keychain sized USB flash drives. The random I/O performance is so awful that they're only useful as a large file "sneakernet". And given that "real" SSDs like Samsung's T5 exist, my backups have never been faster.
Right? At these prices, might as well buy a cheap M.2 drive with far better performance with smaller files & drop it in an USB -> M.2 enclosure; I've seen this done by a fair number of tech reviewers, like Hardware Canuck's Dmitry Novoselov.
Silverstone, Transcend, and Startech have all jumped on the M.2 -> USB bandwagon.
Why is the 4K performance so much worse than the Sandisk Extreme Pro and Mushkin Ventura Ultra? Is it just a bad controller design? I could understand if they were a lot cheaper, but these things are right around the Extreme Pro's price.
"Bad" isn't the right word. USB flash drives and SD/microSD cards are effectively "controllerless" and therefore the raw I/O performance of the underlying flash chips is what you get. This is why random tiny I/O ops/sec tend to be very, very slow. Also, the write performance varies greatly between flash chip designs, which might explain why the Sandisk Extreme Pro and Mushkin Ventura Ultra are faster (but still awful in absolute terms).
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p1esk - Wednesday, October 25, 2017 - link
I think USB thumb drives are dying as a category. It's been a few years since I used one. All my files are online (Synology), important ones are backed up to Google Drive. All movies, shows, music, etc are one google search and two clicks away.evilspoons - Wednesday, October 25, 2017 - link
Remember that Google Drive (etc) aren't backup solutions, but file mirroring solutions. If you screw up a file on one computer, it will happily mirror it to every other computer. I use Windows File History, GDrive and Backblaze to make sure my massive photo library doesn't spontaneously blow up.Destoya - Wednesday, October 25, 2017 - link
Google drive keeps old versions of the file for 30 days. OneDrive has a similar feature as well.Elstar - Wednesday, October 25, 2017 - link
I've basically given up on these keychain sized USB flash drives. The random I/O performance is so awful that they're only useful as a large file "sneakernet". And given that "real" SSDs like Samsung's T5 exist, my backups have never been faster.ikjadoon - Wednesday, October 25, 2017 - link
Right? At these prices, might as well buy a cheap M.2 drive with far better performance with smaller files & drop it in an USB -> M.2 enclosure; I've seen this done by a fair number of tech reviewers, like Hardware Canuck's Dmitry Novoselov.Silverstone, Transcend, and Startech have all jumped on the M.2 -> USB bandwagon.
cfenton - Wednesday, October 25, 2017 - link
Why is the 4K performance so much worse than the Sandisk Extreme Pro and Mushkin Ventura Ultra? Is it just a bad controller design? I could understand if they were a lot cheaper, but these things are right around the Extreme Pro's price.Elstar - Thursday, October 26, 2017 - link
"Bad" isn't the right word. USB flash drives and SD/microSD cards are effectively "controllerless" and therefore the raw I/O performance of the underlying flash chips is what you get. This is why random tiny I/O ops/sec tend to be very, very slow. Also, the write performance varies greatly between flash chip designs, which might explain why the Sandisk Extreme Pro and Mushkin Ventura Ultra are faster (but still awful in absolute terms).