My 8gb sandisk cruzer is in need of replacement - the attachment ring has broken off, it often has to be inserted several times to be recognized and the slider mechanism seems to be getting a bit flimsy
I'm looking for something reliable that will survive floating round a pocket or rucksack whilst attached to a key ring and just wondered if anybody had any recommendations ?
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A stick with a cap might survive for longer in the rucksack.
Something like this:
www.amazon.co.uk/Kingston-DataTraveler-101-G2-flash/dp/B0041Q38NU/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1323688011&sr=8-8
Kingston are a known make and I imagine as good as any.
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I have a Sandisk Cruzer which has the USB plug slide in and out and it is now loose. And rarely used. Poor design.
I'd got for a well known name and these things are dirt cheap these days. I'd either go with one with a cap too or one that fold inside to protect itself. If it really needs to be tough then maybe consider the one the Gadget show found to be the toughest in their tests. The Integral Neon USB Flash Drive.
www.integralmemory.com/product/neon-usb-flash-drive
The Gadget show didn't just test them in the pocket! If it's the show I remember they used water, fire, etc.
Or there was this one they tested in a previous series:
fwd.channel5.com/gadgets/home-garden/home/hand-tools/corsair-8gb-survivor-gt
Last edited by: rtj70 on Mon 12 Dec 11 at 12:01
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Right, I shall check out the Gadget Show stuff this evening - they don't seem to want to play on my works laptop.
One concern is the size of the 'hole' for want of a better term, that allows you to secure a pslit ring or similar. On my Cruzer, the split ring somehow got lost and the hole is so small (and not straight) it is difficult to get anything that will go through it, it's almost impossible to get a single thickness of paper clip through it to lash something up.
I'd prefer as suggested to go with a well known name, but these were the first things I saw that appealled -
www.amazon.co.uk/Transcend-JetFlash-V70-Rugged-TS16GJFV70/dp/B002MY8ETQ
anybody have any knowledge of them ?
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I've been using a couple of 'Transcend' SD cards and sticks for a couple of years without issue; I suspect like many products these days there's probably only a handful a factories worldwide churning out this stuff, under a huge range of different brand names.
This isn't cheap for the amount of GB but looks pretty beefy:-
www.amazon.co.uk/Stainless-Keyring-Supports-Windows-Metallic/dp/B004ZU0AJ2/ref=sr_1_3?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1323697184&sr=1-3
or:-
www.amazon.co.uk/Aluminum-CAPSULE-Flash-Memory-Metallic/dp/B00355Z05M/ref=pd_cp_computers_2
Last edited by: spamcan61 on Mon 12 Dec 11 at 13:42
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One USB stick I got cheap is a TDK one. It hasn't got a full sized USB plug in the sense the metal you'd expect to see isn't there. It folds in on itself. It is very small. About an inch long and less than half an inch wide.
But I can't find it online anywhere.... which might say the design was not durable? Who knows.
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One USB stick I got cheap is a TDK one. It hasn't got a full
>> sized USB plug in the sense the metal you'd expect to see isn't there. It
>> folds in on itself. It is very small. About an inch long and less than
>> half an inch wide.
>>
>> But I can't find it online anywhere.... which might say the design was not durable?
>> Who knows.
>>
compare.ebay.co.uk/like/260900862380?var=lv<yp=AllFixedPriceItemTypes&var=sbar
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re the small hole? pop down to your local phone bitz shop and get a phone lanyard. Very thin but strong nylon loop, that is fixed to a split ring on the other end. have one on my san disk cruzer slider.
I also have on of these, again fixed to a thin lanyard.
www.amazon.co.uk/NEON-InnoDisk-Plug---Forget-USB2-0/dp/B00369T0K8/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1323707625&sr=8-10
Absolutely tiny.
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Plug and forget - or it would be unplug and lose. I probably need something of a normal size and brightly coloured fro the occasions I detach it from my keyring.
I have enough trouble remembering where I've put the keys most of the time.
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Not that one Duncan. This is really small and folds in on itself. When closed it is 1 inch by just under 0.5 inches.
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No doubt you know the usual snag with removable media. They are not 100% reliable and I had a whole set of photos corrupted via one of them. They are still there but there is no way of opening them now.
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I have had the same problem with a SDHC card - and solved it, with a commercial photo-recovery program.
I lost dozens of RAW2 files; after a long process with the recovery program, I got all the pictures back, except that all the files were now JPG (many of them huge, presumably because they included corrupted or irrelevant data).
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I'd never rely on portable flash storage like USB or SD card for the only copy of a file. Long term certainly not.
Would I trust SSD - yes but that is different in terms of implementation etc.
And always have a backup! Realise if on holiday you might risk losing some pictures.
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>> I'd never rely on portable flash storage like USB or SD card for the only
>> copy of a file. Long term certainly not.
>>
>> Would I trust SSD - yes but that is different in terms of implementation etc.
>>
I wouldn't rely on any single device for the only copy of a file - always back up - though a good quality USB stick, CF or SD card should be more reliable than an SSD because an SSD is effectively a multitude of the same type of chips with a controller.
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>> I wouldn't rely on any single device for the only copy of a file -
>> always back up - though a good quality USB stick, CF or SD card should
>> be more reliable than an SSD because an SSD is effectively a multitude of the
>> same type of chips with a controller.
You dont give up do you. Did you mother hit you with an SSD as a child? is that where this irrational fear of SSD came from?
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>a good quality USB stick, CF or SD card should be more reliable than an SSD because an SSD
>is effectively a multitude of the same type of chips with a controller.
Actually, SSD is much more reliable than the consumer stuff. The SSD controller is capable of predictive failure and will usually be able to dynamically remap locations before they fail completely.
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Been running SSD drives in my fairly heavily used home PC for about two years now. They were relatively cheap ones at the time, and I even had paging turned on for a while (shock horror). No problems so far, touch wood.
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USB stick recommendations - Iffy
