Larger than 32GB USB Flash Drive Use Case

[The Cow]

I picked up a couple new flash drives to replace some 2.0 and even 1.0 drives and noticed that most start at the 32GB point and going up from there is not terribly expensive by comparison. my main use over a gig is storing a recent set of drivers and install media in case i totally bork something and my 130 some gigs of MP3 fit on my phone for car listening.

 

I'm just curious what others have found useful in having large capacity flash drives.

[Kon-Tiki]

Mainly operating systems (transfering and booting). Depending on the os they can take multiple gigabytes (centOS takes 8 GB for instance). But more than let's say 16GB for files etc. I've actually never needed.

[paddy-stone]

9 minutes ago, The Cow said:

I picked up a couple new flash drives to replace some 2.0 and even 1.0 drives and noticed that most start at the 32GB point and going up from there is not terribly expensive by comparison. my main use over a gig is storing a recent set of drivers and install media in case i totally bork something and my 130 some gigs of MP3 fit on my phone for car listening.

 

I'm just curious what others have found useful in having large capacity flash drives.

I have a few USB 3.1 Type A and C (dual) drives, on one of them I keep some movies in case I need to go to hospital or somewhere where I might not have time to chuck some on my phone... just some favourites that I can watch over and over again.  On another I keep some progs that I might need for my own or someone else's PC in case I don't have access to pull them from my home server... along with some settings and info. And on the 3rd drive I use it with YUMI, to have some much needed ISO installers. 

I have another m.2 adaptor drive with an m.2 SSD inside that has a type C connnector (can be used with a USB c to c, or A to c cable), for my backup stuff, plus in case I need something quickly stored and accessed... this is my most useful drive TBH, 240GB storage capacity, AND pretty fast at approx 240-300MB/s writes.. not expensive either, at the time I got it cost me around £40-45 for the adaptor case and the 240GB drive. Now you can get the drives for around £25 and the caddy/adaptor for around £10 I think. I will be getting more of these.

Plus an NVME one once USB 4.0 comes out and can then get that sweet 40Gbps speeds

 

[RadiatingLight]

I recently needed a 64GB drive to transfer over Witcher 3 from one computer to another. With more modern games it might need a 128GB drive.

[The Cow]

1 hour ago, RadiatingLight said:

I recently needed a 64GB drive to transfer over Witcher 3 from one computer to another. With more modern games it might need a 128GB drive.

This one is a good use case for me. Downloading games to my laptop is way faster than copy from desktop SSD to external HDD then copy to laptop SSD.

 

 

I knew i'd get some good ones from you guys. Most are outside of my activities but it gives reason to why so many are so large. 

[The Cow]

2 hours ago, Kon-Tiki said:

Mainly operating systems (transfering and booting). Depending on the os they can take multiple gigabytes (centOS takes 8 GB for instance). But more than let's say 16GB for files etc. I've actually never needed.

Same, I'm sure there are a whole host of uses but i'v never been in a position or industry that required it.

[The Cow]

2 hours ago, paddy-stone said:

I have a few USB 3.1 Type A and C (dual) drives, on one of them I keep some movies in case I need to go to hospital or somewhere where I might not have time to chuck some on my phone... just some favourites that I can watch over and over again.  On another I keep some progs that I might need for my own or someone else's PC in case I don't have access to pull them from my home server... along with some settings and info. And on the 3rd drive I use it with YUMI, to have some much needed ISO installers. 

I have another m.2 adaptor drive with an m.2 SSD inside that has a type C connnector (can be used with a USB c to c, or A to c cable), for my backup stuff, plus in case I need something quickly stored and accessed... this is my most useful drive TBH, 240GB storage capacity, AND pretty fast at approx 240-300MB/s writes.. not expensive either, at the time I got it cost me around £40-45 for the adaptor case and the 240GB drive. Now you can get the drives for around £25 and the caddy/adaptor for around £10 I think. I will be getting more of these.

Plus an NVME one once USB 4.0 comes out and can then get that sweet 40Gbps speeds

 

I've thought of doing the m.2 drive myself and retiring the old external HDDs but have read that data retention is pretty short when no power is applied, short in comparison to HDDs. The movie idea is great, I have downloaded so much media i have no interest to my phone when given 8 hour notice that i have to fly out.

[RadiatingLight]

1 hour ago, The Cow said:

I've thought of doing the m.2 drive myself and retiring the old external HDDs but have read that data retention is pretty short when no power is applied, short in comparison to HDDs. The movie idea is great, I have downloaded so much media i have no interest to my phone when given 8 hour notice that i have to fly out.

Data retention time for consumer SSDs is about one year without power for the worst-case scenario, where the drive is near the end of it's life (lots of writes).

[LunaP0n3]

I have a 250gig Samsung T5 for holding PC diagnostic programs, Windows install ISOs. I also use it for when I need to shuffle data to another PC fast, or if I need to I can access the data on a modern smartphone with the USB C to C adapter. They do get expensive as the capacity grows, but I haven't had a single issue with mine at all. Tiny little devices, but very fast.

[cengiz]

If you're in a situation where you can't access the cloud very easily (where internet is weak, filtered, or nonexistent) but you need to carry a decent sized library with you. The most classic use case is if you have to have a lot of videos with you and you don't know when you can get to a high speed internet point next.

[Killing-time-itself]

On 1/15/2020 at 1:03 PM, The Cow said:

I picked up a couple new flash drives to replace some 2.0 and even 1.0 drives and noticed that most start at the 32GB point and going up from there is not terribly expensive by comparison. my main use over a gig is storing a recent set of drivers and install media in case i totally bork something and my 130 some gigs of MP3 fit on my phone for car listening.

 

I'm just curious what others have found useful in having large capacity flash drives.

Excess. I hate having just enough to scoot by.