Reliable USB 3 Drive For Backup

[nomdeplume]

Looking for recommendations for a good quality 64GB USB3 flash drive to use for 3rd layer of file backup. Absolute speed isn't necessary but it better hit and maintain 3.0 speeds in both directions. Drive will be used for incremental backups to slowly growing catalog of smartphone photos and a few Office files. At most this will be plugged in twice a year to add 1GB tops before going back in a drawer

From past experience it's a complete crapshoot picking a make and model with quality in the desired size. Had 8GB Patriot for extra RAM duty in a laptop. 4/16/32 GB were worthless but the magic 8GB lasted years with no issues in construction or performance.

 

[P4-630]

Check out http://usb.userbenchmark.com/

 

[Jetster]

Its dangerous to use flash media for back ups.

 

[P4-630]

Its dangerous to use flash media for back ups.

I do this as well, but besides that using a traditional external HDD for an extra copy of my most important files.

 

[Jetster]

I do this as well, but besides that using a traditional external HDD for an extra copy of my most important files.

I use them to but just for short term

With USB 3.0 external platter drive are just as fast. And more reliable

 

[nomdeplume]

Its dangerous to use flash media for back ups.

As backup to a backup with another copy on an offsite drive that started showing sector errors. This is for me to store at my house.

 

[damian246]

I just got a SANDISK ULTRA DUAL OTG 3.0 64GB 64G 130MB/SEC from Ebay for just below U$D18 delivered with free shipping.
Too fresh to say that it is great but so far I'm pretty pleased with it.

I tried a coupe of no name chepos in the 64gb range but what arrived was barely holding 10gb and pretty slow at data transference too.

 

[nomdeplume]

A 50GB formatting loss is far worse than no name cheapo.

At that point I'm rebooting into safe mode and hoping to kill whatever it installed.

 

[newtekie1]

It isn't a formatting loss. The cheap drives from ebay are usually 8GB or 16GB drives that have been hacked to show up at 64GB or 128GB. But when you start to put data on them, anything past the 8GB/16GB just gets thrown away or you start to overwrite data, causing corruption or copy errors. Don't buy cheap flash memory off ebay, even the brand name stuff can be counterfeit. The SD cards are also like this a lot of the times.

Also, flash drives are fine for doing backups to. They are actually pretty reliable when used in this way. They are using the same storage NAND as SSDs, and we all trust those. The difference is Flash Drives are easily hot swappable. The constant inserting and removing of the drive is what eventually causes most flash drives to fail. The power surge when the flash drive is inserted, along with static discharge, eventually cause the controller of the NAND to fail. However, if you are only inserting or removing the drive every once in a while when you do a backup, then it is fine and they can last for years.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820178986

That is a good drive, that won't break the bank either. It isn't the fastest, but it is faster than a lot of other "USB 3.0" drives.

 

[nomdeplume]

I knew it was counterfeit/illegal activity. Just harkening back to the digital picture frame Christmas fiasco where someone installed malware on a few hundred thousand of them on their way to a big box retailer.

That PNY was a lightning deal on amazon yesterday.

 

[Komshija]

Adata S102 Pro seems a good choice. It's fast and has reasonable price. I have it for almost a year and it works fine.

 

[flmatter]

http://www.officedepot.com/a/browse...ordsPerPageNumber=24&Ns=p_ZonePriceSort_75|0/
http://www.officedepot.com/a/browse/portable-flash-drives/N=5+509664&cbxRefine=501423/

External hhd and flash drives if you have an Office Depot near by. May not be as cheap as ebay but decent deals

 

[nomdeplume]

Funny story; Installed W7 on a 120GB V300 a year ago and asked them how much disc space it showed left. Yesterday I got my hands on the computer to find out they have >8GB of files to back up not 60. Windows has swollen to 33GB and the rest is downloaded drivers and various updates. So I'm going to upload the better chunk of that into google drive and stuff the rest on any one of my nearly full spare drives.

I myself could do with a decent flash drive so I welcome all the good suggestions.

 

[Folterknecht]

Afaik - regular USB sticks use the lowest binned NAND

 

[jboydgolfer]

Just order a $15 Orrico external hard drive cage with USB three plugs. Then you're not limited to some shabby little 64 GB thumb drive and instead you can install a traditional 2.5 or 3.5 inch hard drive or solid-state drive in any capacity and also have other uses for it that arent limited to whatever a thumb drive is good for, personally that's what I would do