Experience With Flash Drives --- What Are Best Brands?

[Frank-0-Video]

Greetings ....

I've used flash drives for several years now, but have only tried two brands -- SanDisk and PNY.

The SanDisk drive (Cruzer, 4 gigs) has worked well. I have had several PNY 1-gig Attache drives and one 4-gig Attache drive that have worked well.

Only once did a drive fail on me, and that was an 8-gig PNY Attache drive. The first hint of trouble with it was when my laptop would not boot up (through the C: drive) with the PNY 8-gig drive attached. When the PNY-8 drive was removed, the laptop booted up in the normal fashion. The PNY-8 drive did continue to work A-OK otherwise, and no bootup problems occurred when attached to other computers.

Now the drive has completely failed. Fortunately, no really crucial data was on it, so the loss was nil.

I would be interested to know about other people's experiences with SanDisk and PNY flash drives. Also, I would like to know if there are other brands I should looking at if PNY and SanDisk are not necessarily the best ones available.

When listing the best flash drive brands you know of, please do so in terms of reliability, longevity and (if able to) lowest known rate of failure.

BONUS - Attached to this post is a screenshot of my failed PNY 8-gig as seen on Windows Explorer. Opinions on what you see are welcome.

Thanx-A-Lot, Frank-0-Video

[edDV]

Qualifying RAM takes major investment. Need an advertising supported web site to even begin to afford the analysis. Try to find one.

Brand names help if supported with warranty. NewEgg has user reviews.

Otherwise those $19.95 32GB Fry's advertising deals seem tempting to try. I wouldn't use them on anything important.

[nic2k4]

I've used everything from a Sandisk to a Kingston knock off. Sandisk are more expensive because they use the best chips they can get and they get better quality control. But, you get as good reliability with Kingston at a better price. I've only had 1 drive fail and it did so right from the start. It was a kingston copy and I wasn't surprised; I only paid $5 for a 4Gig. I just returned it to the store and got my money back.

Right now I have a Rosetech, Kingmax, Dane Elect, 3 Kingston, Transcend and a Kingwin. Three I use for booting an OS on USB (Linux and DOS) for PC troubleshooting. Two I keep on hand just in case. One is the ultra slim/small kind I keep in my wallet for times I need to save a file un-expectedly. One has all the standard programs I use on new PC buildups. And the last one I use to transfer files.

The one thing I won't use a flash drive for is as permanent storage of important data; I use external hard drives for that. There are more salvage options with hard drives than flash drives. Flash drives can fail without warning; bits can change and corrupt your data. Not counting on how many drives I've lost, including an expensive Sandisk. That's why to me the best flash drive is the cheapest one. Every drive I buy gets tested with H2Testw. I run a couple passes for peace of mind.

[aedipuss]

i've had good experiences with ocz and adata drives. fast and reliable. the most interesting flash drive i have is an old pqi "mr flash" that refuses to die. it's even been through the clothes washer/dryer a couple times and keeps on working, even the led light.

[ranchhand]

Just as important as the chip is how the drive is engineered. I have a 16gig that is fast and dependable (so far) but the nuisance has a thumb push-button to extend and retract the metal jack. I have to hold the darn thing because it retracts back into the body when I try to push it in to the USB port. The other type has a pop-off cap to expose the plug, but they always get lost.

[Poppa_Meth]

I've got a Patriot Xporter that I love. The things has lightning fast transfer speeds and is fully rubber clad so it's tough as nails.