Small High Performance Thumb-drive Recommendations

[MikeS159]

I keep USB thumb-drives on my keys, one is a Linux boot drive and one is for file transfers. I have a Samsung Fit Plus 256GB for file transfers, but it can be extremely slow to transfer large files. It seems like it overheats and stops transferring for a while before resuming. When I plug it into a USB 2.0 port it works at a more consistent speed without stopping. It seems to be slightly faster to transfer via 2.0 than 3.0 because of the constant pauses. I originally got this one because my old Sandisk UltraFit 128GB had the same over heating problem.

Does anyone have any recommendations for something performant in a similar form factor?

[Kilrah]

I use this with a fast 90MB/s microSD

https://www.kingston.com/en/memory-card-readers/mobilelite-duo-3c

 

 

[MikeS159]

A Micro SD card reader is a good shout. The USB-C connector adds unnecessary bulk for me, so I'll look for an A only one, preferably with somewhere to attach it to a keyring.

Edit: Then again, with the USB C interface I can plug it into my phone and tablet too

[leclod]

I got that 256GB Kingston DTMC3G2 on my keychain.

Pretty happy with it.

The 114mB/s writing speed doesn't last long and it slows down to a respectable 30mB/s.

I don't know about slow downs while reading, don't think so.

Edited May 12 by leclod

[leclod]

1 hour ago, Kilrah said:

I use this with a fast 90MB/s microSD

Doesn't it slow down too at some point ?

[Kilrah]

The thing is it's gonna depend on the card, and it's way easier to get cards with known performance specs than flash drives. It even tends to be cheaper... that's a third into a 128GB transfer onto a $27 256GB card

 

 

The dual USB is really convenient for me, relatively often have to transfer files to someone with a mac (or even recent Windows) laptop that only has USB-C, or that way i can connect it to my phone to transfer stuff to/from without whipping out the laptop. And at the time when I bought 4 of those I tried every dual port flash drive I found and they all had appalling 10-20MB/s writes.

 

It does get "can barely touch it" hot on such large transfers but still holds up.

[leclod]

10 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

It does get "can barely touch it" hot on such large transfers but still holds up.

It's not impossible the heat increases the wear on the flash though.

Those SSD cards might not be built for such large and fast data transfers.

Edited May 12 by leclod

[Kilrah]

If it needs to slow down it will. 

 

SSDs' normal temp range also exceeds what you can touch.