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USB Drive

The best USB 3.0 USB Thumb Drive

technologyEdward Kiledjian

Even with the abundance of cloud storage options, I think everyone should carry a USB thumb drive (flash drive) in their Every Day Carry (EDC) kit. It is still the fastest, most efficient and most secure way to move information from point A to point B.

For every online cloud service there are 100 different types, brands and models of USB thumb drives. To save you time and money, I did all the homework and the USB thumb drive you should buy is the SanDisk Extreme USB 3.0 32GB model (link).

What you should consider when buying a USB thumb drive

In summary, there are only 5 elements to consider when reviewing USB thumb drives:

  1. Performance (read / write speed)
  2. Durability (this thing will be beaten constantly and you want something that will protect your valuable data
  3. Carry-ability (the drive should be as light and small as possible)
  4. Design (some thumb drives are so thick they'll use one USB port and block another)
  5. Cost

Update your thumb drive regularly

Technology improves quickly and this truth applies to computers, tablet, smartphones and of course USB flash drives. An award winning drive from last year likely was dethroned by something faster, better and cheaper this year. 

I bring this up because many readers hold on to USB flash drives until they die but considering how much performance changes, you may want to refresh your primary everyday carry thumb drive at least once every 18 months.

The thumb drive evaluation

There are thousands of thumb drives available on Amazon, DHGate.com, Aliexpress.com, etc. In preparation for this article I read thousands of reviews, articles, test results, etc. I used all of this information to compile a list of my top 10 devices. These 10 devices had the best performance, competitive pricing, great design and tones of positive reviews. The brands that made my top 10 are the ones you would expect : Sandisk, LaCie, Patriot, Lexar, Corsair, Transcend, Mach, Kingston.

I then acquired brand new versions of each for testing and ran them through the following CrystalDiskMark (link) tests:

  1. Sequential Read / Write
  2. 4KB Random Read / Write
  3. 512KB Random Read / Write
  4. Copying small files
  5. copying large files

In summary you have to be careful of the USB 3.0 moniker as some drives perform as slow as 35MB/sec and others can deliver close to 200MB/sec.  As an example the Toshiba TransMemory-EX 32 GB delivered up to 300MB/sec performance whereas the Patriot supersonic was below 40MB/sec. USB 3.0 does not mean the manufacturer has maximized performance. 

The Winner is

After many hours of testing, the best value (see 5 characteristics above) was the Sandisk Extreme USB 3.0 32 GB drive.  It performed fantastically well is every performance test. It's performance blows away the speed of any mechanical hard drive. To really maximize its throughput you need to pair it with a PC containing a good SSD.  

When you consider that you can pickup a 32GB version of this drive for around $US40, it is almost as cheap as the crappy no name brand cheap thumb drives from China. 

Although the drive is USB 3.0, it is backward compatible with USB 2.0 drives. Even if you only have USB 2.0 right now, buy this drive because your next PC (home or work) will definitely have USB 3.0.

The runner ups

The Sandisk Extreme USB 3.0 delivered about 220MB/sec performance. The next highest performer was the Mach Xtreme MX-ES , Patriot Rage XT, Kingston Datatraveller HyperX 3.0, Transcend JetFlash 790. 

If you see any of these cheaper than the SanDisk, it would still be a good deal to consider.

Going Paperless Part 5 - Backing up your data

OrganizationEdward Kiledjian
Image by Martinluf under creative commons license

Image by Martinluf under creative commons license

First go here and read my article on the 3-2-1 backup rule.

There are 2 types of backups:

  • Offline backups
  • Online backups
sad_mac_retro_THUMB_clipped_rev_1.png

 

An Offline backup is simple, it is an external hard disk or USB key you use to periodically keep an extra copy of your data. As an example you plug it in once a week to copy the information over then unplug it. The problem with this model is that you may forget to backup your data or the data loss may happen just before you back it up therefore you may lose all the data you created since your last backup.

An Online backup comes in 2 forms:

  • Hot online backup 
  • Cold online backup

For Mac users, a hot online backup is like Time Machine or Dropbox (for everyone). This is a drive that is mapped to your computer where the information stored therein is replicated out to the cloud.

CryptoLocker+Ransomware+demands+$300+to+decrypt+your+files_clipped_rev_1.png

With the recent rash of Cryptolocker, we learned about the risks associated with hot online backups. This is certainly a better option than no backup but Cryptolocker discovered these backups (because they have mapped drives) and proceeded to encrypt your information unless you paid their ransom. 

Cold Online backups are services like (Carbonite, Backblaze or Crashplan) that backup your data using a local agent (and not by mapping a drive letter on your computer). These types of backups provide the benefit of a second or third copy of your data and they protect you from malware like Cryptolocker because these nasties can't directly access your backed up info to harm them. Plus since these backups are automated and near-time after a file is changed or added, there is no risk of forgetting to backup.

My recommendation is to follow the 3-2-1 rule mentioned in my other article. My setting is something like this.

  1. My main data is on my computers SSD.
  2. I replicate that document management structure in Evernote as a second copy
  3. I backup my information to an always connected external hard drive (third copy)
  4. I backup my information to Backblaze (fourth cold online backup)

Cryptolocker  is charging around $300 to recover you files but you could have bought 1 year of online cold backup (from any of the 3 listed above) for about $50 per year. Unfortunately once disaster strikes, your options are more limited and typically everything costs more (paying the ransom, sending your drive to a data recovery lab, etc). So backup first and backup often.

AA Battery and USB Key in one

GeneralEdward Kiledjian
We all have USB keys and we all use AA batteries so designer Wonchul Hwang has married them into one concept. Unfortunatly this is still only a concept but I'm sure someone will borrow the idea and create a kickstarter for it...
You plug it into a PC and use it as portable storage which also charges it. If you're stuck and need a AA battery for a flashlight or radio, just pull it from the PC and drop it into the device.
Source: instash