Hi all, or ones to avoid? When asking this on the Debian list some hinted that size is not always correct in terms of capacity. Thanks, Kare
On Fri, Jul 03, 2026 at 02:56:00PM -0400, Karen Lewellen via Talk wrote:
Hi all, or ones to avoid? When asking this on the Debian list some hinted that size is not always correct in terms of capacity.
Well the size is normally correct, just people get confused by the different units. The maker will use SI units so they will claim 64GB which to them means 64,000,000,000 bytes. Windows (and many other operating systems) will usually use the traditional power of 2 units where 1 KB is 1024 bytes, rather than 1000 bytes. So GB is 2 to the power of 30 rather than 10 to the power of 9. In the case of a 64 GB drive that works out to 64,000,000,000 / 1024 / 1024 / 1024 = 59.6 GB. Some people see that size in windows and think the drive isn't the size that was promissed on the package. Some software will make the distinction and use 64 GB = 59.6 GiB where the i is inserted to indicate binary or base 2 units rather than SI base 10 units. For brands, I personally tend to stick with sandisk. I have had really really bad experience with some kingston models that were just unbelievably slow to the point of being just about unusuable. I do also have a number of random generic brands if I was looking for a specific purpose, usually something extremely small for use in the car for MP3 files or something similar where I just don't want it sticking out but care a lot less about the long term reliability or speed. I have one 16GB drive I have had for about 10 years now that is really small (it doesn't even have the metal part around the USB port just the inside plastic part of the port to reduce the thickness) which has been surprisingly durable. It has a small magnet too so you can stick it on the fridge, or as I discovered, you can also find it stuck to the inside of the dryer if you forgot it in your pocket. It didn't seem to have minded the trip through the washer and dryer at all. Not even sure how many dryer trips it had before I noticed it. -- Len Sorensen
On Fri, 3 Jul 2026 at 21:21, Lennart Sorensen via Talk <talk@lists.gtalug.org> wrote:
I have one 16GB drive I have had for about 10 years now that is really small (it doesn't even have the metal part around the USB port just the inside plastic part of the port to reduce the thickness) which has been surprisingly durable.
"Durability" will differ depending on whether you're talking reading or writing. Drives will specify the estimated or guaranteed number of write cycles, never read cycles. Only writing causes wear on the drive, limited to a maximum number of writes for any given cell. Reads don't cause wear and are essentially infinite, assuming the electronics don't fail in general. Electronics could fail due to abuse, such as extreme higher than recommended temperatures or moisture from "running the drive through the washer and dryer". Even the cheapest, slowest drive could be quite durable if you're mostly reading from it, with only occasional writes, such as one that is used to store and play audio or video files. Data retention time is also a "durability" factor. Bits set to 0 are written by trapping electrons behind an insulator and read by non-destructively sensing the presence of this electronic charge. However, this charge will slowly leak off, eventually causing a cell set to 0 to read as a 1. Operating at a higher temperature can increase the leakage rate and lower the retention time. Retention time is usually expressed in terms of decades and the quality of the drive will affect this. -- Scott
Hi folks, Thanks everyone for providing terrific expertise. Of all the comments, Evan's claim nearest to the ones echoed in the Debian thread I started. One more tiny question though. Sorry if my innocence is showing big time here, but I have to guide another person through the search, and acquire process..Amazon becoming profoundly no longer accessible adaptive tools wise. My goal mirrors what Scott notes here, I will be reading often, writing on occasion, audio for certain. Certainly first. However, searching USB stick via duckduckgo is producing flash drives, memory sticks, neither of which are what I believe? I want. Especially since I need at least well 100 gig. I do not need a tig, but do not want to end up ordering something that proves unsuitable, as in moving a music folder from a macbook pro to this item, so I can move said folder to an IPod. What is my search term? Thanks, Kare On Sat, 4 Jul 2026, Scott Allen via Talk wrote:
On Fri, 3 Jul 2026 at 21:21, Lennart Sorensen via Talk <talk@lists.gtalug.org> wrote:
I have one 16GB drive I have had for about 10 years now that is really small (it doesn't even have the metal part around the USB port just the inside plastic part of the port to reduce the thickness) which has been surprisingly durable.
"Durability" will differ depending on whether you're talking reading or writing. Drives will specify the estimated or guaranteed number of write cycles, never read cycles. Only writing causes wear on the drive, limited to a maximum number of writes for any given cell. Reads don't cause wear and are essentially infinite, assuming the electronics don't fail in general. Electronics could fail due to abuse, such as extreme higher than recommended temperatures or moisture from "running the drive through the washer and dryer".
Even the cheapest, slowest drive could be quite durable if you're mostly reading from it, with only occasional writes, such as one that is used to store and play audio or video files.
Data retention time is also a "durability" factor. Bits set to 0 are written by trapping electrons behind an insulator and read by non-destructively sensing the presence of this electronic charge. However, this charge will slowly leak off, eventually causing a cell set to 0 to read as a 1. Operating at a higher temperature can increase the leakage rate and lower the retention time. Retention time is usually expressed in terms of decades and the quality of the drive will affect this.
-- Scott ------------------------------------ Description: GTALUG Talk Unsubscribe via Talk-unsubscribe@lists.gtalug.org Start a new thread: talk@lists.gtalug.org This message archived at https://lists.gtalug.org/archives/list/talk@lists.gtalug.org/message/BHSSQFJ...
To most people these days, "flash drive" is synonymous with "USB drive" and IMO that term can be used safely in search. Of course make sure that the search result specifies not only "USB" but preferably what version of USB, Make sure that the connector also matches what you want since a growing number of flash drives are USB-C. "Memory sticks" could work but is IMO far less common and too ambiguous. You'll find lots of decent 128GB drives, with good brands costing between $25 and $40 each. Decent brands 128GB are between $25 and $40, 256GB about $65 each and 512GB about $100. I cannot speak to Mac suitability since I've never used that environment. - Evan On Wed, Aug 5, 2026 at 5:46 PM Karen Lewellen via Talk < talk@lists.gtalug.org> wrote:
Hi folks, Thanks everyone for providing terrific expertise. Of all the comments, Evan's claim nearest to the ones echoed in the Debian thread I started. One more tiny question though. Sorry if my innocence is showing big time here, but I have to guide another person through the search, and acquire process..Amazon becoming profoundly no longer accessible adaptive tools wise. My goal mirrors what Scott notes here, I will be reading often, writing on occasion, audio for certain. Certainly first. However, searching USB stick via duckduckgo is producing flash drives, memory sticks, neither of which are what I believe? I want. Especially since I need at least well 100 gig. I do not need a tig, but do not want to end up ordering something that proves unsuitable, as in moving a music folder from a macbook pro to this item, so I can move said folder to an IPod. What is my search term? Thanks, Kare
On Sat, 4 Jul 2026, Scott Allen via Talk wrote:
I have one 16GB drive I have had for about 10 years now that is really small (it doesn't even have the metal part around the USB port just the inside plastic
On Fri, 3 Jul 2026 at 21:21, Lennart Sorensen via Talk <talk@lists.gtalug.org> wrote: part
of the port to reduce the thickness) which has been surprisingly durable.
"Durability" will differ depending on whether you're talking reading or writing. Drives will specify the estimated or guaranteed number of write cycles, never read cycles. Only writing causes wear on the drive, limited to a maximum number of writes for any given cell. Reads don't cause wear and are essentially infinite, assuming the electronics don't fail in general. Electronics could fail due to abuse, such as extreme higher than recommended temperatures or moisture from "running the drive through the washer and dryer".
Even the cheapest, slowest drive could be quite durable if you're mostly reading from it, with only occasional writes, such as one that is used to store and play audio or video files.
Data retention time is also a "durability" factor. Bits set to 0 are written by trapping electrons behind an insulator and read by non-destructively sensing the presence of this electronic charge. However, this charge will slowly leak off, eventually causing a cell set to 0 to read as a 1. Operating at a higher temperature can increase the leakage rate and lower the retention time. Retention time is usually expressed in terms of decades and the quality of the drive will affect this.
-- Scott ------------------------------------ Description: GTALUG Talk Unsubscribe via Talk-unsubscribe@lists.gtalug.org Start a new thread: talk@lists.gtalug.org This message archived at https://lists.gtalug.org/archives/list/talk@lists.gtalug.org/message/BHSSQFJ...
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-- Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada @evanleibovitch / @el56
On Fri, Jul 3, 2026 at 9:21 PM Lennart Sorensen via Talk < talk@lists.gtalug.org> wrote:
On Fri, Jul 03, 2026 at 02:56:00PM -0400, Karen Lewellen via Talk wrote:
Hi all, or ones to avoid? When asking this on the Debian list some hinted that size is not always correct in terms of capacity.
Well the size is normally correct,
Unfortunately that is not always the case. In the early days of USB drives I acquired quite a few from a combination of sources, including ebay and Aliexpress and promotionally branded freebies. In the process I found myself with more than a few that would store less than the capacity that they reported to the host hardware. They would gladly accept the writes, but when you went back to read the data it just wasn't there (beyond a capacity many times less than what was on the label or reported by `df`). As the field has matured and USB drives replaced floppy disks and then writable CDs and then writable DVDs for tasks such as file transfer and Linux installation, the situation has stabilized and prices have dropped enough such that there's no real value in buying something not from a recognizable brand. Apparently the scam has spread to Amazon and bogus drives are still being sold <https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/16/23557569/amazon-scam-review-merging-16tb-external-ssds> . Generally speaking, drives bought in most brick-and-mortar stores should be OK, as well as Amazon or Walmart online purchases of mainstream brands such as Sandisk, Lexar and Kingston. I have all three and they work fine. I would treat anything received as a promotional item to be suspect until I had verified capacity. And I would stay far far away from eBay or any Asian online source. When in doubt, a suite of tools for Linux known as F3 (Fight Flash Fraud) is explicitly purposed to detect fakes. And, as always, something that looks too good to be true usually is. - Evan
On Sat, Jul 04, 2026 at 05:55:13PM -0400, Evan Leibovitch via Talk wrote:
Unfortunately that is not always the case.
In the early days of USB drives I acquired quite a few from a combination of sources, including ebay and Aliexpress and promotionally branded freebies.
In the process I found myself with more than a few that would store less than the capacity that they reported to the host hardware. They would gladly accept the writes, but when you went back to read the data it just wasn't there (beyond a capacity many times less than what was on the label or reported by `df`).
As the field has matured and USB drives replaced floppy disks and then writable CDs and then writable DVDs for tasks such as file transfer and Linux installation, the situation has stabilized and prices have dropped enough such that there's no real value in buying something not from a recognizable brand. Apparently the scam has spread to Amazon and bogus drives are still being sold <https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/16/23557569/amazon-scam-review-merging-16tb-external-ssds> .
Generally speaking, drives bought in most brick-and-mortar stores should be OK, as well as Amazon or Walmart online purchases of mainstream brands such as Sandisk, Lexar and Kingston. I have all three and they work fine. I would treat anything received as a promotional item to be suspect until I had verified capacity. And I would stay far far away from eBay or any Asian online source.
When in doubt, a suite of tools for Linux known as F3 (Fight Flash Fraud) is explicitly purposed to detect fakes. And, as always, something that looks too good to be true usually is.
Oh yeah the cheap online scams is a different story. I have never bought any of those because I never believed I could buy a 1TB USB drive for $19.99. I don't need a drive that claims to store 1TB but destroys data once you pass 16GB of actual writes. -- Len Sorensen
To avoid: Kingston To get: Samsung In the middle: Adata Quality usually drops the longer it's on market. What they do is, they make it in Korea or Japan at first, then they make it in Taiwan, and finally in China. After initial batch, they already recouped the cost, and it's pure profit after that. I bought my 32GB Adata (100MB/s read, 50MB/s write) early when the review was good. They actually published the speed. It's still performing per specs after all these years. Few years after, I bought another one (same model), and it died and had to return. On 2026-07-03 14:56, Karen Lewellen via Talk wrote:
Hi all, or ones to avoid? When asking this on the Debian list some hinted that size is not always correct in terms of capacity. Thanks,
Kare
participants (5)
-
Evan Leibovitch -
Karen Lewellen -
Lennart Sorensen -
Scott Allen -
William Park