USB memory sticks

[Rod AshtonParticipant @rodashton53132]

With online and local shop prices varying extremely. i.e 2TB £4.99 online to local supermarket £19 for 32mb. Can you trust the online ones in your experience please. Accepting that quality is safer, is there a middle road?

Your recommendations appreciated.

[Rod AshtonParticipant @rodashton53132]

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Posted by Rod Ashton on 31/12/2018 09:09:31:

With online and local shop prices varying extremely. i.e 2TB £4.99 online to local supermarket £19 for 32mb. Can you trust the online ones in your experience please. Accepting that quality is safer, is there a middle road?

Your recommendations appreciated.

.

Rod … Can you really buy 2TB for £4.99

If so, please share your source …

MichaelG.

[Stuart BridgerParticipant @stuartbridger82290]

Take care, a lot of scams regarding fake 2TB USB sticks

[Johnboy25Participant @johnboy25]

Rod. I’ve heard of bad experiences with reliability on ‘cheap’ memory cards used in video camcorders. For something you may need to backup – I’ll go cheapest branded deals in supermarkets. Purely on the basis there buyer hopefully would buy conterfiet products. The same goes for batteries too. Just a thought🤔

John

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

I always use Integral USBs, no problems so far

Can get 128GB for 20 bananas on you know where

Bottom line is Go for a branded version if your data matters

Caveat emptor

Edited By Ady1 on 31/12/2018 09:49:00

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

The cheapest 1TB branded UK seller flash USB on ebay at this moment is 350 quid

Gives you a ballpark figure

[VicParticipant @vic]

There are lots of Chinese counterfeits out there. I only buy memory from reputable suppliers.

[Nick Clarke 3Participant @nickclarke3]

In the day job I buy and use 50 or so memory sticks every year, most of them Kingston, but I have never heard of any issues with Integral as has already been suggested – PROVIDED they are genuine!

The only fake stick I have ever had time to investigate was marked up as Sony (it wasn't). I bought it very cheaply to see what had been done to it. The controller chip had been re programmed to tell the host it was 64Gb but there was only 1Gb of memory present. It worked perfectly with small amounts of data but as soon as the chip was full everything became corrupted and the stick could not be used or reformatted.

Very small capacity sticks are now relatively expensive but I would not recommend the largest ones as solid state memory has a limited life and I have seen sticks 'wear out' as the directory or equivalent gets constantly rewritten. I suggest 8-32GB is the size to go for at present where the cost/capacity balance is about right and if a stick fails you do not lose everything in one go. But even so please back it up often.

One final thing, if you hold personal data (eg address book, club membership info or similar) Data Protection legislation requires you to keep this secure and a hardware encrypted memory stick, though expensive, is a good way to do this.

Oh and finally, finally, if you are using a stick away from 'home' remember to take it with you. I often fit cheap keyrings or tags from the stationers to them to make them more visible.

Edited By Nick Clarke 3 on 31/12/2018 11:18:53

[AJWParticipant @ajw]

Think of what you can lose on a duff stick.
I bought a cheap 1gb stick years ago, very unreliable – will only now buy from good known suppliers.
Not worth it.

Alan

[Swarf, Mostly!Participant @swarfmostly]

Here are a couple of web-sites that might be of interest:

**LINK**

and

**LINK**

I hope these help.

Best regards,

Swarf, Mostly!

[Steve Skelton 1Participant @steveskelton1]

Be very careful buying on eBay or similar – I have bought memory which when tested had about 20% usable – they claimed it was genuine Samsung Evo. The only way to check is to buy it and test it using H2testw. If buying on-line only buy from a supplier with a lot of good relevant feedback.

Steve

[Robert Atkinson 2Participant @robertatkinson2]

Sandisk from Tesco is a good price quality compromise. Ebay and the like is just too much chance of gettng a fake.

Robert G8RPI.

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Posted by Rod Ashton on 31/12/2018 09:09:31:

… Can you trust the online ones in your experience please…

Buying online is no different from buying from anywhere else, whenever money changes hands, beware of rogues! When a bloke offers to sell you a Rolex in a pub car-park, it's unlikely to be genuine. A good question to ask is when considering a deal, 'If this goes wrong, how will I get my money back?' Online, Amazon are fairly safe, others less so – you might worry about a vendor in North Korea with no Review history.

Another question is, 'How much will it hurt if this super-cheap bargain fails after I've filled it with data?" The answer might be 'not much', for example I have a digital camera used to take workshop and other utilitarian photographs. Almost as soon as the pictures are taken they're downloaded to my PC. Not much harm would be done if a dirt cheap unbranded memory card failed, and that's what I use. However, when losing photographs would be painful I use another camera – it's fitted with £ branded performance memory.

You might be different but I never store anything of long-term value on USB sticks. They're used for transferring copies, not archiving originals. The main reason I have a few expensive USB sticks is for performance not reliablility, I sometimes boot 'Live' operating systems from USB and find cheap sticks are often sluggish.

Despite it being low-risk in my case, I tend to avoid very cheap sticks because they take you into conman territory. As they feed on greed beware of losing your head if you can't resist a 'bargain'!

Dave

[Clive Brown 1Participant @clivebrown1]

Intrigued by the low prices mentioned in this thread, I searched for "1 Tb memory stick" on Ebay. The description of the first item that I clicked on contained the following wording:-

"The capacity and speed can vary with a minimum of 8 GB useable capacity and upwards. The drives may display more memory being available but errors may occur once the maximum is reached."

This is for a 1TB drive priced at £13.45

Would you buy one based on this description?

Edited By Clive Brown 1 on 31/12/2018 15:09:43

[Mike PooleParticipant @mikepoole82104]

If it sounds to good to be true it probably is, what is really annoying is buying fake at normal selling price. Good deals are to be found but no one is going to give stuff away. 

It is probably still good practice to eject a device before unplugging.

Mike

Edited By Mike Poole on 31/12/2018 15:25:46

[Stuart BridgerParticipant @stuartbridger82290]

The going rate for a Kingston USB stick is £700 for 1 TB and £1400 for 2TB, so for £13.95 what do you expect…
Also I do question the need for that much space on a stick??

[Brian GParticipant @briang]

I've been using Mymemory for years, quick service and never had any problems (unlike 32GB SD cards dredged up from a certain South American river, rejected because they were 2GB cards with altered firmware).

**LINK**

I like the all metal Kingston drives, £13.99 for 64 GB.

As far a super cheap terabyte memory cards are concerned, this video just about nails it https://youtu.be/J-D6tYBX8vE

Brian

 

Edited By Brian G on 31/12/2018 15:45:41

[Rod AshtonParticipant @rodashton53132]

Thanks for your input. Suitably warned, will stick with the Kingston & Sandisk 64gb that I currently use,

[Anonymous]

Be aware that there are two types of flash memory, NOR and NAND. Generally NAND memory is higher density and cheaper per memory unit. However, it is not error free without external ECC help. It is aimed at areas where data errors are not critical, like answer machine storage. On the other hand NOR memory is less dense and more expensive, but is error free. So it is used for applications like program storage.

If you buy a cheap USB stick consider which type of memory you might be getting.

Andrew

[Enough!Participant @enough]

Posted by Michael Gilligan on 31/12/2018 09:15:39:

Posted by Rod Ashton on 31/12/2018 09:09:31:

With online and local shop prices varying extremely. i.e 2TB £4.99 online to local supermarket £19 for 32mb. Can you trust the online ones in your experience please. Accepting that quality is safer, is there a middle road?

Your recommendations appreciated.

.

Rod … Can you really buy 2TB for £4.99

 

OTOH, £19 for 32 megabytes ?   (leaving aside the possibility of 32 megabits)

Edited By Bandersnatch on 31/12/2018 17:23:02

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

It is probably still good practice to eject a device before unplugging

That is very very very good advice

Yanking it out without checking can require you to reformat the drive then recopy your data

I've never done it myself of course, much too intelligent, just read about this issue in a book somewhere

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

I got a C10 128GB Sandisk Ultra for £14 in Tesco, because they were clearing stock for the next generation.

Neil

[Jon LawesParticipant @jonlawes51698]

I just tend to buy from ASDA when needed. I've a fair chunk of confidence they will be genuine.

[Clive HartlandParticipant @clivehartland94829]

7 day shop.com have a good selection of named memory.

[Author]

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