I just laid to rest a 16GB Lgear drive that I bought in the spring. Of course, I will need to buy another. Research is pointless since noone can predict how long they will last.
My questions are
Thanks in advance.
Here’s a battery of tests. I’ll note that they didn’t include the Kingston:
http://www.testfreaks.com/blog/review/usb-flash-memory/usb-flash-drive-comparison-21-tested-and-compared/
The author made a reliability assessment which I didn’t fully understand. The Read/Write performance variation was not trivial.
The author runs his tests on novelty USBs:
http://www.testfreaks.com/blog/information/usb-novelty-flash-drive-roundup-36-tested-and-compared/
They typically perform worse and deliver lower performance.
USB test blog:
http://www.testfreaks.com/blog/category/review/usb-flash-memory/
Apparently 4gb is the performance sweet spot. The author uses the OCZ Rally2Turbo.
I’m not aware of any real reliability tests on consumer USB flash drives.
IIRC, the memory chips inside every flash drive (the same as in other forms of flash memory) are made by a handful of big manufacturers, and are pretty much commodity items. They can and do differ in performance, and are graded accordingly, but otherwise might as well be identical. If there is any difference in reliablity between manufacturers or batches, there’s no way for the consumer to know.
Now, all sorts of manufacturers then will take those chips and put them in their own USB drives. Here, all you can do is try to find a more reputable name – I’ve never heard of Lgear, and would assume they’re some small fly-by-night or rebranding operation somewhere in the vicinity of Taiwan. When you have small operations trying to skimp on everything, you can get cheap flimsy cases, bad solder joints, fragile circuit boards, etc.
IME, most USB drives because of some connection breaking, instead of a failure of the chip inside.
All a consumer can really do is stick to the bigger, more reputable brands like Sandisk or Kingston (though that’s hardly a guarantee). For durability, I went with the Sandisk Cruzer Titanium, which has a very durable metal case and retractable plug. It’s survived a few years on my heavier-than-average keychain. Someday, even it will meet its end, probably when I have it plugged in to a computer and bump it the wrong way…
If reliability concerns are due to the damn thing breaking (which is often the cause of failure for flash drives), there’s always this beast…
I was surprised by the variation in performance shown in my links. For example, among the 16gb drives, the Kingston Data Traveler took more than 50% longer to read a certain amount of information than the Kingston HyperX. (158 seconds vs. 102 seconds).
Say somebody is cheap. At the 4GB level, the author’s choice of the OCZ Rally2Turbo will set you back $47 at Amazon. Now apparently that drive also has a bunch of features that the author liked, though I couldn’t find them listed on the Amazon website. But for perhaps a 5% performance compromise, one can get the Cosair Flash Mini (4gb) for less than $15 plus ship, not including the $5 rebate coupon which may or may not be worth the aggravation.
Those wanting to use Readyboost on Vista machines will want to focus on read speed presumably. I opine that the Cosair is worthy of consideration.
Another thing to remember is to be careful of the thought that because a drive is from major name company it’s good. The Sony 8 gig click drive (which is a nice ergonomic design) I have is just unbelievably dog slow compared to my 32 gig Kingston Data traveler. Sony is obviously using the absolute crappiest, cheapest memory they can get away with for this drive.