USB 3.1 flash memory drives. What's your preference?

After dedicating my USB 3.0 128Gb thumb drive to music duty in my car (head unit has a USB input), I needed another large USB drive for my computer work. So I started looking around and noticed that the “value point” shifted from 128Gb to 256Gb. Makes more sense to fork out a little more money for the larger drive. I was just about to pick up a Sandisk Pro Extreme 256Gb, when I spotted the Corsair Voyager GTX priced very closely. This is a pretty remarkable device with SSD controller circuitry in it. The only drawbacks is that it is appreciably heavier and there’s a cap that doesn’t dock.

Well, the Sandisk Pro Extreme does have aluminum trim around a plastic casing, but it’s still very light. And with the retractable USB jack, dust & debris can get inside it. I decided to go for the Corsair Voyager GTX. I bought it a few days ago and it just arrived. It is… amazing. Very, very solid build. The cap fits on snugly with a high quality dense foam surround inside the cap. It’s just a bit wide, so it will overlay an adjacent USB port. But that can be solved with a USB 3.1 hub. Performance seems excellent. I got mine for $71.99 just today, but of course now all of the sudden it’s $5 cheaper.

I got a Voyager from 2011 or so its still nice and works with good speed for the time and still today very reasonable for 8GB size
But the cap is missing for like 7 years now never found it, probably went into vacuum cleaner one day

Also got a 64GB Sandisk pro which is very fast, the bigger they get speed gets a lot more important, with speed comes heat, so many sticks can get very hot and throttle speed

I think with both brands you cant go much wrong, good speed and realibility

I just use whatever I can get with a coupon from Microstore. :laughing:

Actually, I tend to just grab microSD, which I can stick into plain SD card adapters (same except no hard lockout), and into adapters for use in a regular usb slot.

Coincidentally I just bought a Corsair Voyager GTX too and I love it. It is fast for both reads and writes. I do not like that it uses a loose cap to cover the port though. That is just begging to get lost.

My oldest USB flash drives are Sandisk. Never had a failure with any of them. I’ve got one of those titanium cased ones, back from the 4Gb days. Still works great. I use it for small file needs, when saving a file in GMail draft isn’t expedient. I just used it for some config files on my car stereo head unit (firmware update, plus image files). Wish I could swap higher GB circuit inside it. Speaking of which… there are DIY USB drive casings available. And you can buy the chips separately. You’re talking like 2 to 3 times the memory for the same price as manufacturer enclosed USB drives. But they’re twice as big. Anyway, several of my old Sandisk USB drives came with caps. One of them went missing. Still have the others. I’m good about not losing stuff. This Voyager GTX cap is HUGE and heavy. Not expecting to lose it.

I use 512GB ssd m2 in portable enclosure. 2x cheaper than GTX, 2x more capacity, same speed, more flexibility.
Mike

Yes, I had actually looked into the possibility of building a 1Tb drive using SSD M.2 or NVMe memory and there’s even some casings that have retractable USB jacks. But overall, the size is a good bit larger than the OEM manufactured drives. Early next year I’m going to look into building one of these. Really impressive capability and nice to have options versus OEM external backup SSD units.

How about Arcanite flash drives? Anyone bought and tried it?
The reviews are quite good and hardly heard of this brand name.

Got any links? I tried searching but all I was turning up was pinterest stuff involving taking a normal one apart and hot gluing it into random things like creepy-looking fake finger.

Search for m.2 usb case or m.2 usb adapter. If you are looking for the one with the retractable USB port then:

https://www.silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=808&bno=12&tb=31&area=en

I have not heard of the brand either. I checked the product url on Fakespot and it gave it an F rating.

The last flash drive I bought was a 128 GB version of this Samsung:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07BPK3XWW

Seems sturdy enough. I use it as an Ubuntu OS drive. Works well.

Also have a Samsung T5 SSD portable.

Frankly, for just $7 more to get a highly respected brand such as Corsair or Sandisk, I’d rather do that than take a chance with a brand having little renown. Sure, the Arcanite may actually be pretty decent, but have you checked the benchmark tests in reviews? Max read and write is not representative of sustained speeds, which are often notably lower than maximums… and can be quite different between competitive brands.

Yes, that’s the one I saw. Unfortunately, it’s not compatible with NVMe SSD. Only M.2 SSD. But I expect that they should release that sometime soon.

Yeah, that’s a terrific price. But I can’t stand those small USB drives. I’d bought a 16Gb one back when that was $75. Lost it somehow. Mine also got very warm, almost hot, when transferring files.

Small? The Samsung Bar Plus looks normal sized to me. Were you thinking of the Samsung Fit Plus or Sandisk Ultra Fit? Those are tiny.

The absolute best pure USB flash drive in terms of sustained read and write performance is the Sandisk 64GB Extreme.

240MB/s+ of sustained read and writes off of some SSD grade flash and controller?

It actually has an SSD controller, and a SATA to USB 3 converter.

Just now doing an update on my Portable Apps on my Patriot 256GB Supersonic Rage. I use it in Hotel ’puters to browse and check email without leaving traces. Pretty fast as far as they go.

Yeah, I own a Samsung Bar+ 256GB (non-affiliate link) . It gets warm, but it’s a cute little thing.

I have one of those!

I bought it almost four years ago.

I guess I did good research considering your high praise.

Mine isn't that speedy, though.

Yeah, I don’t mean those ones that are less than 1”, which are more like semi-permanent docking memory (like a USB mouse receiver). But isn’t Samsung Bar+ like 1.5” in length? At least it does have decent thickness near the tail end. I had one of those ultra slims that are like 5mm in thickness. So easy to lose if you don’t tether it to something.

Well, according to the User Benchmark site for overall performance, based on USB 3.0 data:

Corsair-Voyager-GTX USB 3.0 256Gb - 110% Rank 5
SanDisk-Extreme-USB-3.0-64GB - 74% Rank 7

They don’t have USB 3.1 data on these as yet.