128g Flash Drive (stick)

C

casey.o

I noticed that they are now selling 128g flash drives on Ebay. I cant
comprehend how they can get that much data on those tiny drives. Heck,
that's bigger than some of my hard drives. The biggest Flash drives I
own are 8g and I thought that was big compared to the original 1g ones.

I wont be rushing out to buy a 128g, because they cost more than a hard
drive of comparable size, and I actually bought a 1tb external hard
drive for less money during the Black Friday insanity.

But I'm wondering how stable a 128g flash drive is? Does cramming that
much on a flash drive make them error prone? I've never had any
problems with any Flash drives (8g or less), but I've heard they can
(burn out). Of course everything can fail. For example, I have some
old 1.44 floppies and it seeems that some of them have failed, just from
age. But I know flash drives dont "WEAR OUT", like floppies. But
still, they can fail, and it seems to me that cramming that much data on
them would make them more prone to failure than a 1g or 8g. Anyone know
any facts about this?
 
C

casey.o

Besides what Paul already stated, you do know that eBay sells a lot of
fake flash drives, right? Fake Flash drives (aka frankenflash drives)
will seem to operate normally and report the correct size and all. And
you can fill them up to the size limit and all and the OS won't
complain. Although half or more won't even be there if you try to read
it back. So if the price seems to be too good to be true, it probably is
a frankenflash.

A good utility for testing for fakes is this one.

h2testw (free)
http://www.heise.de/download/h2testw.html

Since eBay has Buyer Protection, you can get your money back, but
sometimes it isn't worth the hassle. USA sellers are usually more honest
than those from China.

I never knew this.......
I just got 2 of them from Ebay, today. They are PNY brand, and in an
original PNY package. 8GB ones. They seem to work fine, but i just
plugged them in and copied one file to them......
I bought TWO of them for about one dollar more than what ONE sells for
at the store. (Same brand). (shipping included).

I'm assuming the fake ones are not packaged.

I never buy anything from outside the US or Canada on ebay. I learned
that the hard way many years ago, because the currency was so different
that I ended up with a much higher price and then I sent a check and it
was rejected. I finally got it all straightened out, but will never
order outside the US again.
 
P

Paul

I noticed that they are now selling 128g flash drives on Ebay. I cant
comprehend how they can get that much data on those tiny drives. Heck,
that's bigger than some of my hard drives. The biggest Flash drives I
own are 8g and I thought that was big compared to the original 1g ones.

I wont be rushing out to buy a 128g, because they cost more than a hard
drive of comparable size, and I actually bought a 1tb external hard
drive for less money during the Black Friday insanity.

But I'm wondering how stable a 128g flash drive is? Does cramming that
much on a flash drive make them error prone? I've never had any
problems with any Flash drives (8g or less), but I've heard they can
(burn out). Of course everything can fail. For example, I have some
old 1.44 floppies and it seeems that some of them have failed, just from
age. But I know flash drives dont "WEAR OUT", like floppies. But
still, they can fail, and it seems to me that cramming that much data on
them would make them more prone to failure than a 1g or 8g. Anyone know
any facts about this?

Flash drives have all the weaknesses of other storage methods.
They aren't permanent. They wear out from usage. Wear leveling
is used to prevent a single location from taking a pounding.
A flash drive can die instantly (plug it in, and get no response).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wear_leveling

I have a 128GB flash, which I used to carry files from the
laptop to my desktop computer. I don't use that thing for
archival storage, and I "assume" all data on there could
be lost at any time.

The one I got ($65 or so) was a pig, in that the write is 30MB/sec
and the read wobbles around 80MB/sec to 100MB/sec or so. That's on
USB3. I was expecting a more balanced performance. That makes this
stick, really no better than the previous one I bought. If I pay
more than double that price, I can find a "fatter" flash stick
with double the channels internally. By using more channels, you
can increase overall bandwidth.

So while I got more storage space, it still isn't competitive
with a hard drive in a USB enclosure. I can get 135MB/sec read or
write with one of those. Make sure you verify the specs carefully,
in order to avoid disappointment. If I spent more than I'd pay
for a hard drive, I could beat the 135MB/sec number.

If you look at this one, on some synthetic benchmarks it does well,
but in real world, writes can drop to 80MB/sec (see the user reviews
for the benchmark data). That's more than twice what I paid. An
ideal flash, would use an SSD controller and a USB to SATA adapter chip,
but all of that would make a flash stick very large. That seems to
echo what I was seeing in that the performance level varies quite
a bit, depending on what you're doing. And occasionally, you'll be
disappointed, when in a "hurry to fill it up".

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA12K1E11249

At least in the USB2 era, there was constant disappointment, and
you could never be in a hurry there.

Paul
 
B

BillW50

In (e-mail address removed) typed:
I noticed that they are now selling 128g flash drives on Ebay. I cant
comprehend how they can get that much data on those tiny drives.
Heck, that's bigger than some of my hard drives. The biggest Flash
drives I own are 8g and I thought that was big compared to the
original 1g ones.

I wont be rushing out to buy a 128g, because they cost more than a
hard drive of comparable size, and I actually bought a 1tb external
hard drive for less money during the Black Friday insanity.

But I'm wondering how stable a 128g flash drive is? Does cramming
that much on a flash drive make them error prone? I've never had any
problems with any Flash drives (8g or less), but I've heard they can
(burn out). Of course everything can fail. For example, I have some
old 1.44 floppies and it seeems that some of them have failed, just
from age. But I know flash drives dont "WEAR OUT", like floppies.
But still, they can fail, and it seems to me that cramming that much
data on them would make them more prone to failure than a 1g or 8g.
Anyone know any facts about this?

Besides what Paul already stated, you do know that eBay sells a lot of
fake flash drives, right? Fake Flash drives (aka frankenflash drives)
will seem to operate normally and report the correct size and all. And
you can fill them up to the size limit and all and the OS won't
complain. Although half or more won't even be there if you try to read
it back. So if the price seems to be too good to be true, it probably is
a frankenflash.

A good utility for testing for fakes is this one.

h2testw (free)
http://www.heise.de/download/h2testw.html

Since eBay has Buyer Protection, you can get your money back, but
sometimes it isn't worth the hassle. USA sellers are usually more honest
than those from China.
 
B

BillW50

In (e-mail address removed) typed:
I never knew this.......
I just got 2 of them from Ebay, today. They are PNY brand, and in an
original PNY package. 8GB ones. They seem to work fine, but i just
plugged them in and copied one file to them......
I bought TWO of them for about one dollar more than what ONE sells for
at the store. (Same brand). (shipping included).

I'm assuming the fake ones are not packaged.

I never buy anything from outside the US or Canada on ebay. I learned
that the hard way many years ago, because the currency was so
different that I ended up with a much higher price and then I sent a
check and it was rejected. I finally got it all straightened out,
but will never order outside the US again.

It wouldn't hurt to check them anyway. As you don't want to lose stuff
first and then find out. Even if they are not frankenflash drives, that
utility will also find defects. It is kind of like doing a surface scan,
but better. I did find one USA supplier on eBay that was selling
frankenflash drives. He claimed he didn't know they were, but I am not
sure I really believed him. I bought like 8 of them or something. I
opened the first package and it tested as a frankenflash. Then I told
him and he was really interested if I opened the other packages and I
said no. That kind of bothered me why would he care unless he was going
to resell them or something.
 

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