Labelling USB sticks

I'll occasionally scoop up the plain Jane Kingston brand, when they're on sale..., lot's of room to write on them...

I put individual USB sticks into snack-sized Ziploc bags along with a Post-it note indicating the current contents. But, I'm cheap and lazy.

@kelper What I meant was I haven't found any USB sticks that are really flat and really strong.

I have a couple USB sticks in a metal housing that come close, from Silicon Power and Kingston. I tried to search for them just now, and yikes, I found none!

Top one is called Ventoy. Bottom one is called Ventoy. Box I got from the fishing gear shop only has some vape related stuff like tiny blue screwdrivers─and a couple of red ones.

A bit of painter's masking tape and a marker.

A credit card sized USB flash drive. Not sure if is really practical, but it is on the market, and there is sufficient space to write a lot of text in big letters!

I use nylon cable tie tags that I bought on Amazon.

I just label them in Windows drive properties, and I usually know which drive is for what. If not sure, pop them into pc and look at properties.

To be honest, I have 2 or 3 emergency/toolkit thumb drives...,
I'll transfer large amounts of data maybe once or twice a year...,
aside from that, I rarely use thumb drives anymore.

Haydon said:

A credit card sized USB flash drive. Not sure if is really practical, but it is on the market, and there is sufficient space to write a lot of text in big letters!

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If I used one of those on my laptop, I wouldn't have access to the other USB port, as it would be blocked. On some of my USB thumb drives, I just use old labels with sticky-back adhesive. On the super small ones, I just put them in a small envelope and label the envelope.

When I label my flash drives, I label it with a paper and double-sided tape it to the drive.

When I have my new flash drive, I bought one of @DigitalGoat said in #3 and put it on the drive.

In top of that, I also label my drives in Windows.

@Haydon


If you haven't run into them before.... Cable labels...

128GB Samsung Bar - on sale <------ $15 (ships and sold by Amazon).

Folks, can this be real? 1 TB for $20

https://www.amazon.com/Umeway-Water...pY2tSZWRpcmVjdCZkb05vdExvZ0NsaWNrPXRydWU&th=1

Haydon said:

Folks, can this be real? 1 TB for $20

https://www.amazon.com/Umeway-Waterproof-Keychain-Storage-laptops/dp/B0BX3GPG8V/ref=sr_1_2_sspa?crid=2P9F4JN0UNB1E&keywords=usb+flash+drive+ruichenxi&qid=1679023642&sprefix=usb+flash+drive+ruichenxi,aps,121&sr=8-2-spons&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUEzUU5VNVdWVU5EOUVWJmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwNzAxNzA4MlFNWjNHRUhLRTlKSiZlbmNyeXB0ZWRBZElkPUEwMjIxNTc5MzRPNDJJNU84NDIwTiZ3aWRnZXROYW1lPXNwX2F0ZiZhY3Rpb249Y2xpY2tSZWRpcmVjdCZkb05vdExvZ0NsaWNrPXRydWU&th=1

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I would be cautious about cheap solid solid state drives. There are too many scam drives out there. I don't put any weight on the few reviews for it. They only indicate the drives works not how well they work and whether the drives even have 1TB of storage. If you want you can buy one and report on how real it is.

wabbit said:

If I used one of those on my laptop, I wouldn't have access to the other USB port, as it would be blocked

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There are two parts. The thumb drive separates from the credit card.

Haydon said:

@kelper What I meant was I haven't found any USB sticks that are really flat and really strong.

I have a couple USB sticks in a metal housing that come close, from Silicon Power and Kingston. I tried to search for them just now, and yikes, I found none!

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These are tiny and durable - Sandisk Ultra Fit - up to 256GB

@kelper These tiny USB stubs are too small for labelling. What I meant by really flat and really strong is something like the following, although I have doubts about this particular one for different reasons, see my previous post.

I just use a label maker that I already have for labeling other things and use a smaller font so I can get two lines out of it for the label. The width is perfect and requires no trimming.

@bob3d Which brand and model is your label maker?

If the write speed happens to be a lot slower than 250 MB/s and/or I can see quite a few user reviews saying that it runs hot so that it breaks easily, then I just label it "DO NOT BUY".