I got 3 of the Sandisk USB 3 standard 64GB that seem to be slower than claimed, but I haven’t measured throughput and it might be due to having a hand crank, manual kick start computer:-). Price was good, and most importantly, they are reliable and PC Magazine gave them a “top pick” due to reliability.
Stunning that 2 TB drives are out there for mid $40 range. Just crackers. Beats loading floppys in I suppose….
If I were to use it for backups I would go for the pricier ones. The other ones are okay for non critical stuff. I mean 128 - 256 gb of data if lost would be a pain.
I’m actually looking for ones that have a led in them. Makes it so much easier to gauge what’s going on. I don’t see many that have this feature anymore. Gotta keep looking.
The Mushkin flash drives that I linked to have a red LED light on the tail that blinks when the drive is active.
If you duct tape the cap to the tail like I do, you cover up the light, so you could just keep the cap in a ziplock bag and never use the practically useless cap.
Alternatively, you could use clear duct tape (or other transparent tape.)
99% of “fast” USB 3 drives are only fast at sequential reads and writes (few large files), and choke HARD on lots of tiny files.
Actual fast USB drives will use actual SSD controllers. Or just get a m.2 to USB adapter and buy your own m.2 SSD (careful to check compatibility though)
I use a flash drive to boot laptops to run and restore from Easus to do image files. It is rare, but in a day of ransomware, and the possibility of total failure of my SSD hard drive, I am somewhat paranoid about backing up my 5 most used laptops. I actually do a 1:1 clone of my most used one monthly. I keep image files for a year in case a corrupt file had been around longer than I knew. I have not done a traditional re-install in 10 years at least.
OK…well Easus to do uses a modified linux file to boot, it is after all a program to recover from total hard drive failure, so windows has no effect. At boot, all that matters is the computers bios and whether the usb has a bootable operating system. It only has files to boot and load better USB files that will allow the usb to search an external usb hard drive for image file. You put in the usb stick and set the bios to boot to it, then after the simple OS and Easeus to do program loads in memory you unplug it and plug in any usb external hard drive to find the image file. It is almost like dos used to be. It may not boot into a windows boot, but as long as the bios can see the drive, it will boot to the modified linux boot. It is a pain to create the bootable stick, because easus to do does not just supply the necessary files and they are open source. I have never encountered any flash drive that I can’t make bootable. How to Create EaseUS Bootable USB, CD/DVD, and ISO Image with EaseUS Todo Backup - EaseUS It also makes that flash drive useful only for the boot drive, as it creates a boot file that does not play well with windows. It is made from an ISO cd file and it is not just very simple. It will boot even if there is not even a hard drive in the computer. It has been a while since I made about 5 of the bootable flash drives, so I would have to read up on how to do it now.
