I've pretty much stopped using 'stick' type storage for anything >256MB, as regardless of brand and series, my experience is that these thingies overheat under anything but light write usage, and either slow to a crawl or drop off the USB bus entirely before my copy is finished.
'Credit card' sized SSDs are not that much more inconvenient to carry and store, and don't exhibit any of these issues for me.
And the thermals on these things must be horrible, plus the label makes it look like a knock-off: Sandirk?
NVMe enclosure are cheap, mine is a ugreen supporting usb 3.2 gen2 and i paid less than 20 euro. Put any kind of half decent nvme in it covered by one of those cheap heat dissipator.
And not for nothing, the SSDs that GP is describing are exactly this - NVME sticks with a USB/Thunderbolt interface and some kind of usually aluminum enclosure with a layer of thermal conductive material.
The most irritating thing about the credit-card sized ones, are how they aren’t attached if you move around.
I like to be mobile, so I put some velcro ultra-mate on the back of my laptop, and also on my disk, then the disk can be attached and plugged in while I move around.
I also got a 90-degree USB-C cable for a more direct cable route.
This reminded me of my professor's laptop with a Ricochet wireless modem attached in much the same way back in the early/mid 1990s. That was an early wireless ISP prevalent in the SF Bay Area.
I've always wondered about why those little gadgets don't come with metal encasings bonded to the chip with a thermal pad, or putty out of the factory. Be it brushed aluminum, copper, or another alloy. Brushed, anodized, or with fins for 'heavy duty (outdoor/industrial?)' use(which you could clean with a brush, if need be).
There should be a market/demand for that, when people are paying fantasy prices for gamified crap, yes?
They do? But that just means that my Transcend USB stick, made from aluminium, just heats up to 60C which makes it very hard to remove after writing without burning your fingers :(
I have two SSK USB sticks that give me write speeds of up to 1GB/s (as long as they're not filled to the brim). I've copied things like 80GB games in something like 2-3 minutes. A real SSD will always be best, but I'm pretty happy with these USB sticks.
The USB sticks you talk about are basically USB SSDs, not what we know as traditional thumb drives.
I have a similar one too from HP(PNY), and it's crazy fast for its size, but the issue is its controller (ASMedia IIRC) reports it to the OS as a UAS (USB Attached SCSI), similar to an external HDD, instead of Removable Mass Storage as most thumb drives do, so you can't hot -plug/-unplug it, and that controller seems to be backlisted by the Linux kernel for some reason, so it's not recognized on linux unless I fiddle with the "options usb-storage quirks" kernel parameters, but even so my BIOS can't detect it to boot from it. From what I understand the issue causing all this is that it's a native 4K-block device causing issues with booting on it as typically 512-byte block native devices are required for EFI boot, or at least that have 512-byte emulation support which this controller does not.
I am so disappointed because I bought a fast USB SSD to install and dual boot Linux on it as a second drive for my Windows laptop. If only I knew that there's such a big difference in the types of USB drives out there and that they're not all remotely the same.
So do your due diligence on linux compatibility, if you ever want to buy these USB SSDs.
The SanDisk Extreme Pro is the best I've found for USB sticks (not to be confused with the "Extreme Go" which looks very similar and sucks). Just be aware that there are a lot of knockoffs, so be careful of where you source and test the speed of a large file copy (along with checksumming the contents) right after purchasing. The real drives always have a metal enclosure as well, which helps.
Someone please copy the yubikey 5c form factor but make it a flash drive. I've been looking for years for a small, durable, usb type-c flashdrive for my keychain but nothing comes close to the yubikey 5c. The 5c has the metal ring so it won't ever rip off my keychain, the hole is large enough to fit a solid metal ring through it, and it is small enough that I can keep it on my keychain and use it without stressing my usb type c ports.
The best I have found so far with good specs is the "sandisk SanDisk ultra dual drive go". The spinny thing is super annoying but you can glue it in place if you don't need the type-A. It's a bit bigger than the yubikey, but it's smaller than the other alternatives.
That's the one that I use now! I'm weary of the spinny kind because with other brands/models the outer spinner has ripped off the flash drive, but at least so far I haven't had that issue with the "SanDisk ultra dual drive go". The only modification I've had to do to it so far is lubricating the spinny bit because it was all grindy and rough.
Having a stick with exposed contacts and no USB shell (like the yubikey has) is not possible in USB3 format. It requires springs on the stick itself, no chance of the easy, pretty much unbreakable yubikey format. That only works for USB2. USB3-A (and -C) reversed the part that is springy, what was previously in the receptacle is now in the plug. Of course USB3-A is a mixed standard so the USB2 part is still as it was for backwards compatibility.
The reason is that the springs wear the most. This ensures longevity of USB ports in laptops where they are hard to replace. A USB cable or device is usually much easier to replace, and also a PC is normally used with many devices so the wear is shared between them now. But it does mean the contacts on the plug side are more fragile now.
And without USB3, filling something at current capacity levels is going to be tedious.
Of course for a yubikey that just transfers a few bytes this is not an issue but for a USB key it is.
Are you thinking of the USB A yubikeys? The 5c that I linked has a shell around the connector. It seems no different to me than any usb type c or thunderbolt cables that I own.
Kingston stopped making the one I really liked. A truly small microSD to USB adapter that could fit in a wallet. This was perfect for always having a USB drive around and not taking up space in your pocket.
Tiny form factor USB drives have been around for ages¹ but only for USB-A ports, so I assume the news here is the USB-C connector (and the availability of capacity over 256Gb). This would be nice, I've been looking for something small that will go in a C port without an adaptor that stops it being so tiny any more, but the shape of these looks like it would irritate me, sitting “high” above the port and likely above the device it is plugged into.
The closest I've found are minimal size dual-port things like https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0B5S29JWY/ but they could be half the length (when inserted) without the A connector at all. I have no portable devices without at least as many C ports as A's, non-portable devices with only A ports I can stick a C-in-A adaptor or two semi-permanently into.
Also note, which I accidentally found when messing with filesystems Samsung created a filesystem called F2FS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F2FS) which apparently has been supported in the Linux kernel and GRUB for ages (2012 and 2019 respectively) and seemingly works great with any kind of flash storage (but mostly external flash storage, because why run F2FS if you can run BTRFS on your NVMe SSD :) )
Going to experiment with it a bit soon, because this IMO is a much nice format than thumb drives which stick out... yes you guessed it.
Considering 1TB sandisk ssds (which have notoriously had high failure rates) were around 100 for 1TB for a while is pretty impressive they got it into that form factor. I wouldn't trust them for anything important though.
Obviously the solution is to get two, one on each side of your laptop, and set them up as mirrors of each other. Then your laptop looks more balanced and you can survive a failure!
"Plug and stay" is a bad idea. A couple of laptops ago, when putting it into the laptop backpack, my hand slipped and the laptop dropped about eight inches into the pocket. It landed directly onto a mouse dongle still plugged into the USB slot. (I know, the dongle should have been "up", I was distracted!) The result was a broken slot, bummer.
Yep, my SanDisk SSD died, was one that had the bad firmware but supposedly a fixed revision. They did RMA it but took about a month. Only using that now for Ventoy, can't really trust it for anything else. Also annoying is they wanted a serial number that they silk-screened on in tiny letters matte black on black.
Quick edit: Wasn't a fake either, was bought direct.
I also wonder if the HDMI port in the stock photo is still easily accessible with this thing plugged in. I hate plug in devices that block other inputs/ports.
Frankly, this is more a visual gimmick rather than useful form factor. And probably that's why sandisk went with this design of pill/small candy - because how long you can do boring 4cm-7cm oblong thumb drives?
This thing is too small to be handled or placed with confidence you won't drop it or knock if off the table.
> The Extreme Fit has been formally announced, and this dongle-like USB Type-C flash drive is available with up to 1 TB capacity. Sandisk also notes that it delivers USB 3.2 Gen 1 performance, and the starting launch price is $15.99.
What a weasel worded sentence. "1 TB … $16". Of course, it's $110, and yes, I see the qualifiers here. Allegedly journalistic sites should cut out the marketing sleeze before publishing. "Starting at 64 GB for $15 and ranging up to 1 TB for $110" it's not hard to write.
One would hope the durability of this is keeping pace with the capacity. If not, what is the niche? The 1TB is an enticement to use this for more than shuffling files from place to place. But absent the durability I would not want to do that.
Personally, I’ve long wanted a USB flash drive large enough to store my full movie collection. Traditional external hard drives are too cumbersome to use on e.g. public transit. By contrast, it’s possible to plug in a flash drive and still actually use my laptop on my lap.
If the drive died, I wouldn’t care too much (beyond the cost of replacing the drive), because the master copy of my collection would still be at home. (And of course I have other backups besides.)
The thing is, 1 TB is actually too small to make this work. I’d really need 4 TB.
Yeah, that's one thing we lost with USB-C. The USB-A port was big enough for a whole system (storage device, wireless chip, security processor) to fit inside. With type C we're back to dongles hanging out.
I want one that is shaped like the USB-C port. Like it was extruded from the port. About as long as a key, maybe a shorter key, like a mailbox key. Has a rounded end with a hole to make a very sturdy keyring hole. Capacity is limited to what would be reliable and not overheat. <1g.
It sounds like you're describing the yubikey 5c form factor. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find a flash drive matching that form factor in my years of searching.
Back when Macbook airs had tiny drives and sdcard slots, there were multiple vendors selling flush-mount sd cards. They work surprisingly well, they can sink heat well into the aluminum body.
This product isn't quite there yet, but it's clearly aiming for the same market.
Since some time ago when "storage is cheap" was trendy, I have been thinking about the question of physical boundaries of data storage, i.e. how many Terabytes can be fit in a square (cubic?) centimetre? Do we know?
They could get rid of the overheating problems by slapping some Frore systems cooling chips on the dies and IO chips. No need to cook the mf out of the chips as we already have solutions to cool them.
When will they start offering flash drives which have a "rubbery" connection to itself (imagine a tenth of an inch of flex cable in silicon) so the port won't take a beating.
SSK and Transcend sell USB-C SSD thumb drives with speeds of 1000 MB/s. They're SSDs though, not flash memory, but they are thumb drives, not big boxes.
At around 120C or so lead solder can become weaker, and this temperature is forbidden in devices that experience vibration or other perturbations. Unleaded solders can handle higher temperatures. All consumer products today are RoHS 6 and so do not have lead.
It would not surprise me if a heavily written ss device in an unventilated environment, such a laptop on a bed with a blanket covering it, or left operating in a bag, could get close to such a temperature on the PCBA. It would also dissipate heat to the USB connector of the laptop, possibly weakening it as well.
Looks like there are some data and guidelines are in ISO 13732-1:2006. $250ish per download, as well as probably available in the company intranet/local city library for free access.
When I was studying at university, I had the highest-capacity USB drive of its time, which was 64mb. I was able to fit all my Word documents and some extras, and still felt huge. I can't find a reason for anyone to use a tiny flash drive and store 1tb info on it. It is too risky to store anything important without a backup. Versioning is also an issue and must be synced somewhere all the time. I thought we were over flash drives already. I only use flash drives for installing fresh distros on old computers. Can't find a reason to use them anymore.
I used SanDisk Cruzer Fit https://amzn.to/47OqNXT for a very long time (USB 2.0) for ESXi server installations too. Never had a problem. But this "new" design looks terrible.
Backup drive is my use-case. But that means a mountain of sustained write traffic, which means thermals are important, which is where this thing sucks. I had been using a regular external with a short cable, until I got a Framework and decided to try one of their "fits in the module slot" SSDs, which is perfect.
I still pop it out after the backup and store it elsewhere, but it's lovely that during the backup job (which can take a while if it's doing a fresh copy), it's completely unobtrusive and can't break off if I set the lappy down wrong.
Maybe they have a GoPro and want to be able to do some basic 4K video manipulation. Or want to download some warez or porn, or use it as a backup drive, etc.
1TB is enough space to be actually useful for some of this, and if you have a somewhat older laptop, it might only have 256GB or 512GB internal.
I've pretty much stopped using 'stick' type storage for anything >256MB, as regardless of brand and series, my experience is that these thingies overheat under anything but light write usage, and either slow to a crawl or drop off the USB bus entirely before my copy is finished.
'Credit card' sized SSDs are not that much more inconvenient to carry and store, and don't exhibit any of these issues for me.
And the thermals on these things must be horrible, plus the label makes it look like a knock-off: Sandirk?
NVMe enclosure are cheap, mine is a ugreen supporting usb 3.2 gen2 and i paid less than 20 euro. Put any kind of half decent nvme in it covered by one of those cheap heat dissipator.
And not for nothing, the SSDs that GP is describing are exactly this - NVME sticks with a USB/Thunderbolt interface and some kind of usually aluminum enclosure with a layer of thermal conductive material.
How do you deal with chronic removal of drive before unmounting?
Are there any enclosures that hold charge to prevent data corruption in an event of sudden removal?
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Any recommendations for >20gbit/s enclosures with passive cooling (that are also not huge)?
I have a 10gbit/s enclosure and a 4TB gen4 nvme in it. It pains me to know that it could achieve >3GB/s write speeds but hindered by the interface.
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sort of related, but I really like the Sabrent PCIe 5.0 nvme enclosures.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CQZ6SYD1
No tools to insert m.2 nvme stick, easily fits and locks into a pcie slot, without a metal bracket to unscrew/remove.
I don't have a pcie gen 5 system, but the new samsung drives might do 14,800 MB/s
I also love thin ethernet patch cables. and 5-in-1 usb cables for travel.
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And they are fast
The most irritating thing about the credit-card sized ones, are how they aren’t attached if you move around.
I like to be mobile, so I put some velcro ultra-mate on the back of my laptop, and also on my disk, then the disk can be attached and plugged in while I move around.
I also got a 90-degree USB-C cable for a more direct cable route.
Is this what we get when we stop making laptops with upgradeable internal storage?
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What do you do with all that storage?
Here's the root partition (well, lvm) on a laptop I have been using for over three years now
I do have an external drive for backups and another for drone footage but this is it. Everything else is either fast enough in the cloud or just here.
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This reminded me of my professor's laptop with a Ricochet wireless modem attached in much the same way back in the early/mid 1990s. That was an early wireless ISP prevalent in the SF Bay Area.
Even smaller and faster are nvme enclosures over thunderbolt. Easily can be boot drive.
Any recommended enclosures that work reliably with Linux?
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No need for thunderbolt, had good experience with good old high speed usb.
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Mobile storage has gotten so much better in the last few years.
I've always wondered about why those little gadgets don't come with metal encasings bonded to the chip with a thermal pad, or putty out of the factory. Be it brushed aluminum, copper, or another alloy. Brushed, anodized, or with fins for 'heavy duty (outdoor/industrial?)' use(which you could clean with a brush, if need be).
There should be a market/demand for that, when people are paying fantasy prices for gamified crap, yes?
They do? But that just means that my Transcend USB stick, made from aluminium, just heats up to 60C which makes it very hard to remove after writing without burning your fingers :(
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It's a stylized S but it seems to be the official 'SanDisk' - the same image is on https://shop.sandisk.com/products/usb-flash-drives/sandisk-e..., linked in the article
I have two SSK USB sticks that give me write speeds of up to 1GB/s (as long as they're not filled to the brim). I've copied things like 80GB games in something like 2-3 minutes. A real SSD will always be best, but I'm pretty happy with these USB sticks.
The USB sticks you talk about are basically USB SSDs, not what we know as traditional thumb drives.
I have a similar one too from HP(PNY), and it's crazy fast for its size, but the issue is its controller (ASMedia IIRC) reports it to the OS as a UAS (USB Attached SCSI), similar to an external HDD, instead of Removable Mass Storage as most thumb drives do, so you can't hot -plug/-unplug it, and that controller seems to be backlisted by the Linux kernel for some reason, so it's not recognized on linux unless I fiddle with the "options usb-storage quirks" kernel parameters, but even so my BIOS can't detect it to boot from it. From what I understand the issue causing all this is that it's a native 4K-block device causing issues with booting on it as typically 512-byte block native devices are required for EFI boot, or at least that have 512-byte emulation support which this controller does not.
I am so disappointed because I bought a fast USB SSD to install and dual boot Linux on it as a second drive for my Windows laptop. If only I knew that there's such a big difference in the types of USB drives out there and that they're not all remotely the same.
So do your due diligence on linux compatibility, if you ever want to buy these USB SSDs.
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The SanDisk Extreme Pro is the best I've found for USB sticks (not to be confused with the "Extreme Go" which looks very similar and sucks). Just be aware that there are a lot of knockoffs, so be careful of where you source and test the speed of a large file copy (along with checksumming the contents) right after purchasing. The real drives always have a metal enclosure as well, which helps.
Someone please copy the yubikey 5c form factor but make it a flash drive. I've been looking for years for a small, durable, usb type-c flashdrive for my keychain but nothing comes close to the yubikey 5c. The 5c has the metal ring so it won't ever rip off my keychain, the hole is large enough to fit a solid metal ring through it, and it is small enough that I can keep it on my keychain and use it without stressing my usb type c ports.
https://resources.yubico.com/53ZDUYE6/at/cm85k8947jm9g32znfs...
The best I have found so far with good specs is the "sandisk SanDisk ultra dual drive go". The spinny thing is super annoying but you can glue it in place if you don't need the type-A. It's a bit bigger than the yubikey, but it's smaller than the other alternatives.
That's the one that I use now! I'm weary of the spinny kind because with other brands/models the outer spinner has ripped off the flash drive, but at least so far I haven't had that issue with the "SanDisk ultra dual drive go". The only modification I've had to do to it so far is lubricating the spinny bit because it was all grindy and rough.
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Having a stick with exposed contacts and no USB shell (like the yubikey has) is not possible in USB3 format. It requires springs on the stick itself, no chance of the easy, pretty much unbreakable yubikey format. That only works for USB2. USB3-A (and -C) reversed the part that is springy, what was previously in the receptacle is now in the plug. Of course USB3-A is a mixed standard so the USB2 part is still as it was for backwards compatibility.
The reason is that the springs wear the most. This ensures longevity of USB ports in laptops where they are hard to replace. A USB cable or device is usually much easier to replace, and also a PC is normally used with many devices so the wear is shared between them now. But it does mean the contacts on the plug side are more fragile now.
And without USB3, filling something at current capacity levels is going to be tedious.
Of course for a yubikey that just transfers a few bytes this is not an issue but for a USB key it is.
Are you thinking of the USB A yubikeys? The 5c that I linked has a shell around the connector. It seems no different to me than any usb type c or thunderbolt cables that I own.
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Kingston makes this product line for many years which meets the requirements I think
https://www.kingston.com/en/usb-flash-drives/datatraveler-dt...
Kingston stopped making the one I really liked. A truly small microSD to USB adapter that could fit in a wallet. This was perfect for always having a USB drive around and not taking up space in your pocket.
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/658398-REG/Kingston_F...
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That's close, but is USB-A, so much larger than the Yubikey GP is asking about.
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Tiny form factor USB drives have been around for ages¹ but only for USB-A ports, so I assume the news here is the USB-C connector (and the availability of capacity over 256Gb). This would be nice, I've been looking for something small that will go in a C port without an adaptor that stops it being so tiny any more, but the shape of these looks like it would irritate me, sitting “high” above the port and likely above the device it is plugged into.
The closest I've found are minimal size dual-port things like https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0B5S29JWY/ but they could be half the length (when inserted) without the A connector at all. I have no portable devices without at least as many C ports as A's, non-portable devices with only A ports I can stick a C-in-A adaptor or two semi-permanently into.
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[1] Examples: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07HPX38XC/ https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07YYMX5LQ/ https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08772NT1L/
This is a successor to the USB 3.2 Ultra Fit (which is also available up to 1TB in size) - https://shop.sandisk.com/en-us/products/usb-flash-drives/san...
Also note, which I accidentally found when messing with filesystems Samsung created a filesystem called F2FS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F2FS) which apparently has been supported in the Linux kernel and GRUB for ages (2012 and 2019 respectively) and seemingly works great with any kind of flash storage (but mostly external flash storage, because why run F2FS if you can run BTRFS on your NVMe SSD :) )
Going to experiment with it a bit soon, because this IMO is a much nice format than thumb drives which stick out... yes you guessed it.
"up to 1 TB capacity... starting launch price is $15.99"
I have adblock, how did this SanDisk commercial make it through?
Note that the $15.99 is for the 64 GB version. The 1 TB version sells for above $100.
It follows the classic format of "Most expensive configuration [price ommited], Lowest price bracket [configuration ommited]"
Considering 1TB sandisk ssds (which have notoriously had high failure rates) were around 100 for 1TB for a while is pretty impressive they got it into that form factor. I wouldn't trust them for anything important though.
Goes well with their affiliate links. And it's actually discounted to $14.99 at sandisk https://shop.sandisk.com/products/usb-flash-drives/sandisk-e...
Plug and stay
Hopefully, this has been tested for durability and some MTBF specs are available to prove it.
Otherwise, buyer beware.
EDIT: I couldn't find any MBTF specs so I looked up the "limited warranty" for this product.
There is no warranty of uninterrupted or error-free operation.
Obviously the solution is to get two, one on each side of your laptop, and set them up as mirrors of each other. Then your laptop looks more balanced and you can survive a failure!
"Plug and stay" is a bad idea. A couple of laptops ago, when putting it into the laptop backpack, my hand slipped and the laptop dropped about eight inches into the pocket. It landed directly onto a mouse dongle still plugged into the USB slot. (I know, the dongle should have been "up", I was distracted!) The result was a broken slot, bummer.
"Plug and stay" is also a horrible idea at a time when laptops routinely come with only 2 USB ports.
I was foolish enough to buy SanDisk.
SanDisk flashdrives get extremely hot and die in months.
The warranty process is time consuming and tedious.
I stick to Samsung flashdrives now.
Can't say i have the same experiences. The only products to fail me where really really cheap AliExpress devices.
Sandisk in general I’ve had good luck with - but there are a ton of fakes out there.
That said, I see no way this drive could dissipate any useful amount of heat at all, so suspicious it would be a problem under sustained write loads.
Especially since most use cases likely would never have sustained write loads.
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Yep, my SanDisk SSD died, was one that had the bad firmware but supposedly a fixed revision. They did RMA it but took about a month. Only using that now for Ventoy, can't really trust it for anything else. Also annoying is they wanted a serial number that they silk-screened on in tiny letters matte black on black.
Quick edit: Wasn't a fake either, was bought direct.
I prefer the SK Hynix Beetle (X31) and Tube (T31) to Samsung flash drives, because internally the are DRAM SSDs, I hope they come out with new models.
SanDisks are very frequently fake, even in brick and mortar stores. Could it be you had a fake one?
I’d rather not have something like that poking out. Looks like it’ll ruin the port when for example it hooks behind something
I also wonder if the HDMI port in the stock photo is still easily accessible with this thing plugged in. I hate plug in devices that block other inputs/ports.
Frankly, this is more a visual gimmick rather than useful form factor. And probably that's why sandisk went with this design of pill/small candy - because how long you can do boring 4cm-7cm oblong thumb drives?
This thing is too small to be handled or placed with confidence you won't drop it or knock if off the table.
That's a more general problem with USB.
The problem I have with USB on windows is how windows insists on turning off/crashing drivers for anything attached to USB for long periods of time.
It’s gotten to the point I just turn off my machine (instead of power saving) so that things actually work when I turn it on.
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Just buy microsd to sd adapter that sits completely flush in the case. Like this called BaseQi:
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0822/8493/files/feature-1_...
Also "just buy" a MacBook Pro to go with it?
Each hole depth is different though I’ve seen versions for some windows laptops like yoga
Speed and write durability are both going to be trash, alas.
Its for storage not like dev drive
Amazon is a little higher priced, but you can get free shipping.
> The Extreme Fit has been formally announced, and this dongle-like USB Type-C flash drive is available with up to 1 TB capacity. Sandisk also notes that it delivers USB 3.2 Gen 1 performance, and the starting launch price is $15.99.
What a weasel worded sentence. "1 TB … $16". Of course, it's $110, and yes, I see the qualifiers here. Allegedly journalistic sites should cut out the marketing sleeze before publishing. "Starting at 64 GB for $15 and ranging up to 1 TB for $110" it's not hard to write.
One would hope the durability of this is keeping pace with the capacity. If not, what is the niche? The 1TB is an enticement to use this for more than shuffling files from place to place. But absent the durability I would not want to do that.
Personally, I’ve long wanted a USB flash drive large enough to store my full movie collection. Traditional external hard drives are too cumbersome to use on e.g. public transit. By contrast, it’s possible to plug in a flash drive and still actually use my laptop on my lap.
If the drive died, I wouldn’t care too much (beyond the cost of replacing the drive), because the master copy of my collection would still be at home. (And of course I have other backups besides.)
The thing is, 1 TB is actually too small to make this work. I’d really need 4 TB.
> Claims to be extreme fit
> Shaped unlike any other USB memory stick and has awkward ill-fitting shape
Genuis
I had a USB-A from sandisk which was very solid and I used it for years. It wasn't flush with the body of the laptop, but was rounded and strong.
This looks super flimsy and like it might break off easily and ruin your port.
Yeah, that's one thing we lost with USB-C. The USB-A port was big enough for a whole system (storage device, wireless chip, security processor) to fit inside. With type C we're back to dongles hanging out.
> Error: Failed to load script: Fallback Failed
That’s unfortunate, apparently the site requires some js, that is probably blocked by my firewall, to even load the page.
https://shop.sandisk.com/products/usb-flash-drives/sandisk-e...
I want one that is shaped like the USB-C port. Like it was extruded from the port. About as long as a key, maybe a shorter key, like a mailbox key. Has a rounded end with a hole to make a very sturdy keyring hole. Capacity is limited to what would be reliable and not overheat. <1g.
It sounds like you're describing the yubikey 5c form factor. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find a flash drive matching that form factor in my years of searching.
https://resources.yubico.com/53ZDUYE6/at/cm85k8947jm9g32znfs...
Close! I'm thinking something like the Kingston DataTraveler, but usb-c.
https://www.kingston.com/en/usb-flash-drives/datatraveler-dt...
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Back when Macbook airs had tiny drives and sdcard slots, there were multiple vendors selling flush-mount sd cards. They work surprisingly well, they can sink heat well into the aluminum body.
This product isn't quite there yet, but it's clearly aiming for the same market.
There are still for any macbook pro with sd card slot. BaseQi or similar
Nothing beats cheap storage like that and completely flush with the case
But how reliable is it? I've heard stories about how unreliable it is, and it's got me concerned.
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I have a few of those still lying around, they were great!
Since some time ago when "storage is cheap" was trendy, I have been thinking about the question of physical boundaries of data storage, i.e. how many Terabytes can be fit in a square (cubic?) centimetre? Do we know?
That number is directly proportional to the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin.
https://what-if.xkcd.com/31/
Very interesting, thanks a lot. If only we had the densities :/
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They could get rid of the overheating problems by slapping some Frore systems cooling chips on the dies and IO chips. No need to cook the mf out of the chips as we already have solutions to cool them.
When will they start offering flash drives which have a "rubbery" connection to itself (imagine a tenth of an inch of flex cable in silicon) so the port won't take a beating.
I've used a similar drive on my Chromebooks for the last decade.
I went looking for a USB-C version and was surprised not to find one.
I would love to see one with SSD speeds if such a thing is possible.
SSK and Transcend sell USB-C SSD thumb drives with speeds of 1000 MB/s. They're SSDs though, not flash memory, but they are thumb drives, not big boxes.
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How hot do these things get? I have a few "bar" type USB sticks that get quite warm after even moderate amounts of data transfer.
How hot is "quite warm"? And how hot is too hot?
From my own observation: Anything over 40C or so feels quite warm to my own touch, but 40C is generally rather insignificant to a solid-state IC.
At around 120C or so lead solder can become weaker, and this temperature is forbidden in devices that experience vibration or other perturbations. Unleaded solders can handle higher temperatures. All consumer products today are RoHS 6 and so do not have lead.
It would not surprise me if a heavily written ss device in an unventilated environment, such a laptop on a bed with a blanket covering it, or left operating in a bag, could get close to such a temperature on the PCBA. It would also dissipate heat to the USB connector of the laptop, possibly weakening it as well.
Looks like there are some data and guidelines are in ISO 13732-1:2006. $250ish per download, as well as probably available in the company intranet/local city library for free access.
With how short the drive is, I think the USB port and the rest of your pc’s motherboard will act as a heatsink for the drive.
Doesn't stick out as much, no, but almost useless when a usb port is positioned above another usb port.
Is it compatible with Linux? The official store page doesn't mention the "Linux" word at all.
USB mass storage is compatible with Linux. SANDISK Memory Zone™ is not.
Durability is more important of capacity+size. Something flash drives are not known for in general.
I think it looks cool, despite what the haters here say. And does no one use desktops anymore?
I had one of these break within a few days of purchase. It's a no for me.
Hmm these tiny things tend to get hella hot for me :(
Better a bigger one.
When I was studying at university, I had the highest-capacity USB drive of its time, which was 64mb. I was able to fit all my Word documents and some extras, and still felt huge. I can't find a reason for anyone to use a tiny flash drive and store 1tb info on it. It is too risky to store anything important without a backup. Versioning is also an issue and must be synced somewhere all the time. I thought we were over flash drives already. I only use flash drives for installing fresh distros on old computers. Can't find a reason to use them anymore.
I used SanDisk Cruzer Fit https://amzn.to/47OqNXT for a very long time (USB 2.0) for ESXi server installations too. Never had a problem. But this "new" design looks terrible.
Backup drive is my use-case. But that means a mountain of sustained write traffic, which means thermals are important, which is where this thing sucks. I had been using a regular external with a short cable, until I got a Framework and decided to try one of their "fits in the module slot" SSDs, which is perfect.
I still pop it out after the backup and store it elsewhere, but it's lovely that during the backup job (which can take a while if it's doing a fresh copy), it's completely unobtrusive and can't break off if I set the lappy down wrong.
Maybe they have a GoPro and want to be able to do some basic 4K video manipulation. Or want to download some warez or porn, or use it as a backup drive, etc.
1TB is enough space to be actually useful for some of this, and if you have a somewhat older laptop, it might only have 256GB or 512GB internal.
Using ventoy and having multiple rescue/install images on one flash drive is super nice. I have a Windows 2 go installation on it too.