USB drives

cereberus · Feb 14, 2023

Edwin said:
Thumb drives are almost passe now..., you can get a 1TB Portable SSD, the size of a credit card, for less than 50 bucks!

Still have an SD card in my car!

View attachment 52749

SD cards are even more unreliable than flash cards. In the case of use above, I presume original tracks are stored elsewhere?

Edwin · Feb 14, 2023

cereberus said:
I presume original tracks are stored elsewhere?

Oh yeah!

iPanda032 · Feb 14, 2023

Flash Drives, SD/Micro SD are from Down binned SSD/NVME NAND. So yes they're basically the bottom of the barrel NAND.

MisterEd · Feb 14, 2023

I use my collection of USB flash drives for installing Windows, bootable tools, and temporary storage of files. I have another solution for larger and faster temporary and semi-permanent storage.

I haven't specifically bought any external USB SSDs. However, after I upgraded the M.2 SSDs in my laptops and desktop I ended up with spare both SATA and NVME M.2 SSDs. To facilitate cloning the SSDs I bought SATA and NVME M.2 enclosures. I also use these enclosures to create external drives with the spare SSDs. These don't replace my external USB HDDs but are handy when portability and speed are important.

pparks1 · Feb 14, 2023

Yeah, I did the same with an external NVMe. It's solid, spent about $20 on the enclosure and $79 on the NVMe. So, $99 for a drive that can do 1GB/sec reads/writes.

MisterEd · Feb 14, 2023

pparks1 said:
Yeah, I did the same with an external NVMe. It's solid, spent about $20 on the enclosure and $79 on the NVMe. So, $99 for a drive that can do 1GB/sec reads/writes.

View attachment 52753

I have found that USB 3.0 is sufficient for external USB SATA SSDs. However, I have found that external USB NVME SSDs are held back by that. They are faster if you connect them to USB 3.1. Note USB 3.0 = USB 3.1 Gen 1 and USB 3.1 = USB 3.1 Gen 2. Confusing isn't it?

As you can see by the screenshots below USB 3.1 is almost twice as fast as USB 3.0 for sequential read/write. However, they are about the same for random read/write.

Samsung 960 Evo 500GB M.2 NVME in USB enclosure connected to USB 3.0 port.

Samsung 960 Evo 500GB M.2 NVME in USB enclosure connected to USB 3.1 port.

pparks1 · Feb 14, 2023

MisterEd said:
I have found that USB 3.0 is sufficient for external USB SATA SSDs. However, I have found that external USB NVME SSDs are held back by that. They are faster if you connect them to USB 3.1. Note USB 3.0 = USB 3.1 Gen 1 and USB 3.1 = USB 3.1 Gen 2. Confusing isn't it?

Yeah, an NVMe is certainly held back by the interface. I like using that NVMe enclosure when we download a new game or get a big update. For example, all 4 of my immediate family members here play Call of Duty. So, when I get a big update, it's faster to copy that onto the external NVMe and then attach it to the other computer. Saves me on my bandwidth caps too by my ISP.

Just a recap of the speeds from a post I made back on tenforums.

Yeah, they really confused everybody with the USB 3 stuff with all of the renaming.

USB 1.0 offered a max speed of 12Mbps
USB 2.0 offered a max speed of 480Mbps

USB 3.0 when it came out, offered a transfer rate called SuperSpeed which is 5Gbps (about 10x faster than USB 2)
Then USB 3.1 came out offering SuperSpeed 10Gbps.
Then, they renamed USB 3.0 to USB 3.2 Gen 1...it's the same speed and offers 5Gbps
They then renamed USB 3.1 to USB 3.2 Gen 2... still offering that same 10Gbps over USB-A and USB-C connections

We also have USB 3.2 Gen 2x2, which is available via USB-C only using 2 lanes of IO, so it offers 20Gbps

Theoretical max
5Gbps = 625 Megabytes per second
10Gbps = 1250 Megabytes per second
20Gbps = 2500 Megabytes per second

jvickers · Feb 14, 2023

I have an 8TB docked for backing up my data drives, a 1TB Samsung T5 for work, a 2TB Sandisk for my OS backup, and a couple of other eternal drives for various things. I use a flash drive in my car when I'm not using Bluetooth for songs.

CountMike · Feb 15, 2023

I use only 2 classic USB3 keys/dongles 8 and 16GB One for Live Linux with tools and 8GB one as . For data transfer and storage I use couple of 2.5" SSDs with USB3.1 to SATA converter.One is my oldish 120GB and one somewhat newer 250GB. SSDs are much more durable, faster and now just as cheap as dedicated flash drives.
As now SATA and NVMe drives of same capacity are about same price, NVMe M.2 drives much faster to go with fast USB 3,1 and 3,2, of 2nd and 3rd gen my next one(s) will be NVME with as fast as possible USB interface. Such combos are fast enough to run an OS from them without loss of speed and are also same size as classical ones.

Graulges · Feb 17, 2023

I use flash drives to transfer files when that's the most convenient way. I don't use cloud storage as my internet connection is so poor;

Winuser · Feb 17, 2023

TechnoMage2021 said:
Then came the little fully enclosed Floppy Disks.

Those free AOL disk use to come in handy.

Berton · Feb 17, 2023

Winuser said:
Those free AOL disk use to come in handy.

That they did. Doing some "cleaning" this AM came across a set of MS-DOS 6 disks which also included the 6.22 Step-up disk.

Winuser · Feb 17, 2023

Edwin said:
Thumb drives are almost passe now..., you can get a 1TB Portable SSD, the size of a credit card, for less than 50 bucks!

Still have an SD card in my car!

View attachment 52749

In my Explorer, I use the Bluetooth to connect to my phone. In my Ram, I use the SiriusXM on the radio

Winuser · Feb 17, 2023

Berton said:
That they did. Doing some "cleaning" this AM came across a set of MS-DOS 6 disks which also included the 6.22 Step-up disk.

I still have some Zip disk. I also still have one of my Zip drives. The drive is internal and I don't have a computer to install it in. I had a USB Zip drive but it fell off of my desk and broke. My Atari computer used cassette tapes. Using the counter was a must and a pain. The Printer used mini ink pens. Those were the days.

Berton · Feb 17, 2023

When I got my first computer I also joined the local computer club, we would visit businesses using various types of computers. One was an engineering first, my first glimpse of CAD drawing of roads, etc., and they used a large pen plotter with rolls of paper for their printouts.

Fabler2 · Feb 17, 2023

The prices for 2 tb NVMe gen 3 drives are cheap as chips today. Useful if your images are rather large, just put in an enclosure as an external. The Crucial drive Endurance (TBW) is 440TB. Not checked the WD one.

Haydon · Feb 17, 2023

Anyone else wondering about USB flash drives being males while USB SSDs being females?

I am talking about the connectors on the device bodies.

I don't think that this yin-yang issue deserves its own thread, but perhaps I can piggy-back here?

CountMike · Feb 22, 2023

Hmmmmm, USB drives are used for FILES, don't know what else you can put on them ?

jimbo45 · Feb 22, 2023

I have 2 X 16 TB SATA drives that I use for backups etc . I attach these to computer (i at a time) via a powered SATA->USB3 connector.

I don't have any "purely usb drives" any more --even external SSD's --have a load of the "old school type" i.e not the Nvme type which I alsoconnect to computers from time to time via a small unpowered sata->usb3 connector --- SSD's don't need a powered connection but 3.5 inch "classical spinners" do especially those with a decent cache size and 7200 RPM (enterprise grade).

I have the odd USB thumb stick for individual boots such as windows install etc.

@CountMike -- any data is "a file" !!!!

of course you could put paper labels on them -- !!!

Cheers
jimbo

FrankW · May 10, 2023

Every month I backup my system (complete 1 TB HDD) twice to a 7-year-old 4TB Seagate Backup Plus HDD (mechanical) and every time I plug the USB3.01 cable in my Acer Aspire5 I get the same old warnings in my Event Viewer:
Application warning MSDTC Client2 event 4879
System warning NTFS event 50
System 50 seems to be a too short timing issue to log an event and Application 4879 a security problem with the Seagate drive (driver is up to date).
I know event warnings can be ignored: One event warning GUID is not in my event registry log channel so cannot be disabled the other one does not have a GUID and I may have to live with these errors till I start using a newer SSD W11 BU disk?
The Seagate HDD, with 75% free space, is still in top shape that I recently formatted in W11 Disk Manager as NTFS, I have attached the permissions (security). Any comments welcome.