I lost my flash drive and need a new one. Transfer speeds don’t matter too much. I will mainly use it to create bootable media and to transfer a few files between computers and/or phones (no cloud storage for me).
Now I’m questioning whether I should get the cheapest drive I can find or if there really is a difference in quality between €8 and €30. What experience did you make?
I like Gorilla Drives because they are waterproof and can even survive being ran over by trucks etc. 🦍 Also temperature safe from freezing and melting-ish.
Also you should definitely checkout Ventoy.
Can have multiple ISOs for Linux distros or eck 🪟 s. Toss in some recovery tools or images like clonezilla/rescuezilla.
Leftover space is still USB mass storage. Can drag and drop files etc.
I’m simply a fan of their literall durability/resistance.
Are there faster drives? Perhaps.
But I like the security of mine working fine even in the event my pocket gets super sweaty or if I accidentally leave my keychain in direct sunlight on a summer day.
Or in my pocket when it’s 32°F outside at winter time when I’m shoveling etc.
At the same time I’ve never had a flashdrive fail due to temperature or water. I used to do printer repair for a fairly large company and on the printers I worked on firmware was loaded just by plugging a flashdrive into the usb port on the printer. I always had a pocket full of flashdrives because of that. Over the years I’ve probably forgotten at least a dozen flashdrives in my pocket when I washed my pants and at least half of those wound up going through the dryer too. They were all still completely functional afterwords. I also live in MN so I’ve left them in my vehicle when it’s -17F outside and had no issues.
The only things I’ve ever actually seen kill a flashdrive are major physical damage like you said, or just general wear from plugging them in and unplugging them too much. Technically I guess I also killed one by messing up a format badly enough but that’s a whole other issue. As far as physical durability goes the full metal body Kingston Data Traveler drives have always been durable enough that I could just shove them in my pocket and not worry about them. I’m sure there are others like those but those are just what my workplace bought in bulk so they are what I typically used.
Not OP but didn’t know about Ventoy. It looks really useful. Thanks.
Thanks for mentioning Ventoy, even if it’s technically off-topic :)