I run all my laptops pretty much into the ground. Anything “too old”, I’ll use for 24/7 disk activity and other torturous stuff, and if it crokes, it crokes. And all of them were hand-me-downs from people or work, and I think only once did I buy one “new”.
Always thought of laptops as disposable anyway, doesn’t pay to fix, so why spend big bux only to have something go teats-up and then hope any “warranty” comes through? Gnope. I take ’em as junk, treat ’em as junk, run ’em into the ground, then rinse, repeat.
Whups, nope, sorry, I do have one that I bought new. Dual-disk HP, gaming machine only, typically only my flightsim, never ever saw Duh Innernet, not even a peep.
@racoon city…Years ago, I used to build my own desktop computers. It was fun, and always unique. Then my spinal cord damage and disability changed everything. Ten minutes after sitting at a desktop resulted in pain. The laptop, I can use from bed. My Evoo gaming EG-LP5-BK is very easy to get into to upgrade…change drives, add memory, etc. It came with 1 drive, but I replaced it with a Samsung 970 Evo 500 GB, and added a 1TB Sabrent Rocket, and a 1TB SATA Crucial SSD. The Samsung and Sabrent are bothe MVME, and the Crucial is in the SATA only space. 1 of the 3 slots in that laptop can use either NVME or SATA M2 2280 which is the same physical size as NVME, but SATA speed. Why anyone would put a slower Sata drive in that slot I have no idea. Most of my SSD hard drives are SATA EVO 860 or even samsung 850 pro. My older laptops did not have NVME drive bays, so I bought a ton of those Sata SSD drives when on sale. Most are now in external hard drive enclosures. The Samsung 970 has a twin that I use for a backup and take the existing drive out monthly to put in a stand alone NVME drive duplicator which makes a perfect clone. I then trade them out for a month. The bottom of the Evoo is super easy to remove for access, which is why I chose it, as I am not a gamer. It is blazing fast for a laptop and even has a real video card 1660 ti with 16 GB memory that can be 32 GB if I ever needed to upgrade it. So far, no reason to add ram, as 16 GB is a lot of ram. I can backup the 970 to image files on the rocket or SATA drive without even taking off the bottom. The Samsung is the boot drive, but the laptop came with a SATA M2 2280 drive in that slot which was the boot drive. Changed that day 1 to get the much faster NVME. The only thing I ever use flash drives for now is small file transfer and as a boot drive for image restore. I do image backups at least weekly to the sabrent or crucial. The clone of the boot drive is just so I can easily defeat any virus or ransomware attack, even if on all 3 drives. The evoo was a bargain for what it is, and is the easiest to upgrade of any laptop ever used by me. 9 screws and the bottom comes off and everything plugs in. Easy as a desktop even to add and remove drives.
I'm also looking into a faster flash drive. I decide to go for the Sandisk Extreme Pro 3.2 flash drive. Something with fast Read/Writes and this one sure has it. 420MB/s read and up to 380MB/s write! It's a bit pricey but I need ease of use, reliability and performance. It goes for $79 CAD. Amazon Canada
I thought of getting the Samsung T7 but lost of complaints about heat issues and shut downs. Sure for only $30 more and get double capacity but I'm looking for ease of use and portability so I skipped the Samsung. It goes for $104 CAD. Amazon Canada
My SanDisk came in the other day and man is it fast! I added some old Flashdrives for comparison. If you want USB Flashdrive portability and speed, the SanDisk Extreme pro can't be beat! ~337MB/s-370MB/s Read/Writes constant!!
Do you like fast Reads but more importantly fast Writes? So fast that a 3GB file transfer is done in <5 seconds! Well, It's so fast I got a 128GB to compliment the 256GB one!
My 6-year-old Sandisk Extreme is reasonably fast, even by today’s standards, but I’m sure there are faster drives out there now.
The problem with many so called “fast” drives is that they’re only fast when transferring large files, but are miserably slow (like less than 1 MB/s) with small files, making them poor choice as a portable OS/boot drive. This Sandisk actually handles small files with very good speeds.
Oh yeah your speeds are great. Quick enough for everyday tasks. Important thing is both your reads and writes are consistent. Most flash drives are high on Writes but low on Reads or vice versa which isn’t really great for daily use. Another problem is they start with fast transfer but it drops down later on.
The Pro on the other hand is like a jet! I did an 80GB transfer and it didn’t drop at all from start to finish! They’re using a different chipset then the others. Might also be using SLC (Single Layer Cell) memory explaining the crazy speeds.
Agreed. Most drives can only sustain these advertised read/write speeds for a few seconds, and then they drop like a rock. I guess that's only important if you are transfering large number of very large files in one go. Otherwise it may not matter that much.
Did some research as well, small files are the bottle neck. Awaiting AXE Speedy 128GB USB 3.1 https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07VR677RL decided to try something different.
price is going up and down on amazon, paid ~16gbp for 128gb. Will update with a speeds when arrives.
Corsair GTX is a good brand and their DNA all about memory items too. Those speeds are quite fast indeed! They have quite a history with their flash drives.
I was doing some transfer tests the last few days. Different sizes and transfers within my local network. I tested files that were small, big, and in between.
The one I did today was quite interesting. Transferred 12 folders with ~4500 items from Laptop to flashdrive and vice versa. The folders are all Lynda.com instructional video material. Lots of small text files and medium to large video files.
The Reads finished in under 1 minute but the Writes took around 15 minutes at ~ 130MB/s! Interesting data indeed.
It goes for $79 CAD. 
They’re using a different chipset then the others. Might also be using SLC (Single Layer Cell) memory explaining the crazy speeds.
They have quite a history with their flash drives.