What brand of flash thumbdrive do you prefer?

[wolfen69]

IMO, Patriot drives are the best. Very fast and reliable. Sturdy soft rubber grip too. They cost a little more than most, but my data is kind of important, so it's worth it.
http://www.frontierpc.com/ProductImages/Large/1012149594.jpg
They consistently win customer's choice awards. Did I mention they are very fast? 200X fast. I'll probably never use anything else.

Btw, I've done side by side benchmarks of various brands, and the patriot wins every time.

Don't ask for a poll, there's too many brands.

[LowSky]

whatever is the cheapest.. i have about 5 free flash drives lying around. Its reminds me of floppy disks from back in the day.

I think the only one I ever paid for was the Ubuntu branded one I picked up around 10.04. Only because it had it preinstalled on it.

[Ctrl-Alt-F1]

Don't really care much. I've NEVER had a thumb drive fail and I protect my data through redundancy anyway.

[wolfen69]

Its reminds me of floppy disks from back in the day.


Except that floppies can't hold 1 to 128 gigs of data. ;) I find my 16gb thumby to be very useful.

[foxmulder881]

Yeah I've got many of the buggers laying around. I use them for work. I do prefer Toshiba and Sandisk though.

[Linuxratty]

Patriot for me as well.

[CharlesA]

Don't really care much. I've NEVER had a thumb drive fail and I protect my data through redundancy anyway.

This mostly. Altho I have more then a few Sandisk brand ones (non U3, thankfully).

[foxmulder881]

(non U3, thankfully).

You can delete that. One of mine came with it. I just removed it and reformatted it to ext4. Done.

[wolfen69]

You can delete that. One of mine came with it. I just removed it and reformatted it to ext4. Done.

I had one that could not be removed. But it still worked OK. Patriot drives come naked.

The reason I need a good reliable drive is for when I make house calls. A lot of people have under 4gb of data, so it is convenient to just use a flash drive to temporarily back up their stuff. I tend to trust flash drives more than an external hard drive.

[foxmulder881]

I had one that could not be removed.

Are you serious? What about when it was formatted?

[wolfen69]

Are you serious? What about when it was formatted?

It could be "removed", but it always regenerated. Very strange.

[Bachstelze]

whatever is the cheapest..

This. Actually I don't even have an USB flash drive right now (lost it I think), and I don't miss it at all. I can use my camera's SD card with an USB reader if really needed, but in general I just put stuff on my dedicated server.

[Eldera]

Just counted 20 Kingstons and 2 HP's. They fit in so well with my work patterns, one group of projects per drive, Plus several live install USBs and a couple of copies of Clonezilla.

I avoided Sandisk when I started using USB's because I was still very new to what I was doing and did not know how to get rid of U3.

I need something midrange in price. The first Kingstons I used worked so well, I just kept getting Kingstons.

[Bart_D]

Patriot. I've found Kingston to be quite slow, in comparison to many other brands.

I must say, I am surprised that people don't seem to be convinced by Corsair. I think it might actually be slightly faster than Patriot.

[Eldera]

I think that when I first shopped for these that Corsair was out of my budget range. They were well rated in the info I read at the time.

I can live with "slow" (Kingstons). I am retired and only use them for hobby purposes.

Just Googled the price of the Patriots on NewEgg and they seem to be pretty well in line with the prices of the Kingstons. Perhaps I will try Patriot the next time I need a new drive.

Thanks for all the good information in this thread.

[jeffathehutt]

I only have one flash drive, and it is one of those rubber covered Corsair drives. It has been very dependable for the past several years. Right now, I am looking for a bigger one and was actually considering the Patriot one in the first post. Maybe one of these days I will get around to buying one. :)

[cariboo]

I really don't have a favorite brand, I usually buy whatever is on sale, so I've got Sandisk, Lexar, and verbatim. I've only had 2 thumbdrives fail over the years, one the dog chewed on, and the other, I kept forgetting to take out of my pocket, and after the 20th washing or there about, it stopped working.

[CharlesA]

...in general I just put stuff on my dedicated server.

I tend to do this too, unless I don't feel like connecting and uploading/downloading files to/from my server. :lolflag:

[SoFl W]

Transcend I believe, the label has long since warn off. I have been very impressed with this. I have reformatted it, put the various versions of Ubuntu on it as a boot stick, transfered a lot of files, and it has been in my pocket everyday for well over two years (maybe three). I even lost the cap for about nine months.

I had one that failed pretty quickly and it was suppose to be "rugged", had an extra large rubberized body to protect it. Lasted about a month and a half.

EDIT:

I only have one flash drive, and it is one of those rubber covered Corsair drives. It has been very dependable for the past several years. Right now, I am looking for a bigger one and was actually considering the Patriot one in the first post. Maybe one of these days I will get around to buying one.
That is what it was, a runner covered Corsair drive. Glad it worked for you, failed quickly for me.

[jerenept]

Pny

[Superkoop]

I just buy whatever is inexpensive and slides down into the body so as not to need a cap. I tend to lose them before they could ever go bad, so it's not a big deal to me... for some reason, I lose flash drives more than I lose anything else, they seem to disappear into thin air...

[Khakilang]

My daughter had two Kingston pen drive 2 and 4GB. And I have one 8GB Kingston pen drive. Just because it is easily available here and the price is good. Never had any problem so far.

[foxmulder881]

Transcend I believe, <snip>

I used to sell USB sticks in my old workplace. We sold mainly Transcend. In the whole 6 years+ I was involved with selling them, we only got about 3-4 returned for faults. They are very hardy sticks and known for their longevity.

[-jay-]

i pretty much go for who has the most reviews

[Old_Grey_Wolf]

I really don't have a favorite brand, I usually buy whatever is on sale, so I've got Sandisk, Lexar, and verbatim. I've only had 2 thumbdrives fail over the years, one the dog chewed on, and the other, I kept forgetting to take out of my pocket, and after the 20th washing or there about, it stopped working.

I buy whatever is on sale as well. I really haven't had a problem with speed and I have not noticed a difference between the brands. I guess it depends on what you use them for. I do most of my transfers of data over a gigabit Ethernet. I have never had a thumbdrive fail; however, I have never washed one :)

[scottmcon]

Am using alternately SanDisk & an HP falash drive for a thumb-drive portable boot to run the Ubuntu 12.10 Can use the flash drive for an installed boot load, also, and am attempting the portable drive with the Ubuntu 12.10 OS.
The OS via thumb-drive portable hasn't loaded succesfully yet; and am having several of the same graphics problems of others posted at this forum. On another note, the Pendrive Universal USB http://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal-usb-installer-easy-as-1-2-3/ installs, formats, and creates a good USB load for the portable purpose - options of Windows or MAC oriented to Linux.
Getting it to load in the portable thumb-drive mode has been the issue; again because of the graphis threshold.
The SanDisk flash drive in use, is programmed in its original formatting (the Cruzer Blade) and its online support notes that the drive is for storage only in that model, on some computers [PC's]. On that note, one would assume that the re-formatting performed in the Pendrive Ubuntu ISO install to the USB cures that. Will note the performance of the Ubuntu in this portable drive here. Meanwhile a download and install of Ubuntu 12.10 on a Windows XP Pro PC as a pair was tried. It also may have softened the PC to reception of the portable drive which will be tried again. More on that install at another post here or on topic in another thread.

[sandyd]

Necromancing - thread closed
As per the Ubuntu Forums Code of Conduct, please do not post in threads more than one year old.

Thanks!

[Bucky Ball]

Thread Closed

Reason: Necromancy. Old thread put to bed ...

@ scottmcon: As per sandyd's post.

It's a waste of time hiding down here on a thread that is getting on for two years dead.

Good luck.