USB pack for installs?

[Tazz 316]

Looking for a pack of USB sticks to use for win 10 install, and other boot recovery media. I had bought a 3 pack of sandisk but the things fail. One PC will recognize it and another wants to format it re-plug it in and it sometimes works.

 

Already tried re-format. They where cheap.

[Slottr]

I've been using a 3$ 8GB stick off eBay for the past two years, literally no issues.

 

Are they USB 3?

[corrado33]

I did a whole test of various brands of USB flash media a couple of years ago. 

 

TL:DR: ADATA drives were the best price/performance. The one I tested in this test (years ago) is still my daily driver. The sandisk extreme was the absolute fastest (and also expensive). The kingston drives sucked (and I recommend everyone avoid them), and the samsung drives were "meh". The other sandisk drives were mid range. 

 

EDIT: Oh and the corsair drive was expensive but wasn't nearly as good as the sandisk extreme, not to mention huge and hard to fit in USB slots, therefore I'd avoid it if the extreme is available. 

 

EDIT2: Personally, I use the slower flash drives from the above tests as install media. Most of the drives' read speeds were faster than a HDD, so if I'm installing to there, it doesn't matter. Older install media (win 7, win XP) get slower drives and newer install media (8.1, 10) get newer, faster drives. Linux live distros are put on a slow drive (cause I'd only be using it for the terminal anyway.) Tools (disk cloner, memtest) are also put on the same USB. I also keep copies of the windows 10 and windows 7 installs, as well as memtest and a single debian live cd as physical copies (CDs, dvds) because some Mobos don't like to boot from USB. 

 

EDIT3: ADATA drives are super super cheap and they work really well. I'd recommend them to everybody. Mine has been a veritable gigolo over the years and still works great. 

[Tazz 316]

19 minutes ago, Slottr said:

I've been using a 3$ 8GB stick off eBay for the past two years, literally no issues.

 

Are they USB 3?

No 2.0 bought at costco.

 

adata is only $4 for 16GB last time i went for price and the drives where crap. I have other sandisk usb sticks and they work fine way more costly though.