Hey lazyweb, what are your favorite high-quality USB flash drives? I’m looking for longevity first, speed second. Thanks!

Eugene Crosser April 14, 2013 12:13

I use LaCie IamaKey/CooKey (when I need a USB drive at all), not because I have any opinion about its durability, but just because it fits so nicely on the keyring.

edit: mechanically, it’s quite solid.

Cristian Gafton April 14, 2013 13:41

The 3pack sandisks I overpaid for at Costco 6 years ago (compared to todays prices and capacity) are still going strong with gpg and luks crypt keys.

Unless you are attempting to use the USB flash drive as a SSD I would not worry about the longevity of the drive…

It is very likely the USB drive case will give up first before the flash cell. One of mine failed because of external pressure stress; another went through multiple wash cycles in the washing machine and dryer and it is still working fine with no data loss whatsoever.

I stay away from brands I never heard of and I basically buy my USB Flash drives based on the functionality of their case. For example I now like the Kingston micro USB flash drives because they are very cool to work with on a laptop USB port as they don’t stick out as much as the regular drive

Michael K Johnson April 19, 2013 12:40

I got a Patriot Supersonic Boost XT. http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/patriot-supersonic-best-usb-flash-drive/  I asked about longevity because it’s replacing a unit that died after about a year during which it was almost never written to, just read occasionally.

Apparently LaCie used to have a USB SSD but it’s out of production. It wasn’t what I was looking for but was interesting to find, and given that, was interesting to see that it wasn’t obvious that you can buy a competing device right now.

Imported from Google+ — content and formatting may not be reliable