Recommend USB thumb drive

[BarkingGhostar]

I know this sounds silly, but I had a history of using Sandisk USB thumb drives until they arrogantly got into bed with Windows 8. That bed relationship caused Sandisk to change the bit in their firmware to make the USB device appear as 'fixed' instead of 'removable'.

This can be a problem for those like me wanting to use some simple tools for creating USB-boot thumb drives. While fixed disks can be booted, too, (naturally), because they are seen as fixed they might not be treated as operating system installation media.

BTW, there is a Sandisk thread about this and it seems that Sandisk stopped doing this, but didn't give a way for consumers to determine in advance if items they are buying might be of certain inventory generation to know if they are getting product with the firmware bit set one way or another.

 

[corkyg]

Thanks for the heads up. I have used many thumb drives over the years, but my absolute fave has been the Lexar Firefly Jumpdrive. I carry one on each of my car keyrings.

I'm sure SanDisk will resolve this issue - they are a good outfit. Thanks again.

 

[HalfCrazy]

I got a OCZ flash drive and a Toshiba flash drive. The OCZ is only a 4 GB flash drive which I use as a bootable device for my needs.

The Toshiba is a 16 GB flash drive which is my daily driver.

 

[ronbo613]

I've got a 2G SanDisk I've had for years, still working fine but I've got bigger drives now including a 8G Corsair Flash Voyager(still haven't lost the cap) I've also had for a few years, a Transcend 16g and a Kingston DTse9 16G(very small, made of metal). All of these drives work fine and are used all the time.

I guess my favorite would have to be the Kingston Data Traveler because it's very small and simple, no moving parts and it's made of metal. They are pretty cheap as well.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

Supposedly the Sandisk debacle was resolved, and Sandisk is telling people in their forums that any product with a packaging date of 2014 or newer will have the 'removable' bit set back again.

 

[corkyg]

That's good to know. Makes one wonder why they did it in the first place. I have 8.1, and my use of thumb drives is no different there than in 7 or XP.

 

[bbhaag]

I own several different brands of thumb drives. All of them work like they should but my favorite one is my Mushkin Ventura Pro. It's the fastest drive I've ever owned and has been very reliable.(knocks on wood)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820226227

 

[Mantrid-Drone]

I generaly stick to Sandisk and have never had any problem with ones from 2GB to 32GB. I also use a Transend 16GB which has given me no trouble either.

Cheaper, unbranded ones 4GB, 8GB and 16GB I've also used successfully for years but they are distinctly slower to write to than the others.

However I have one 32GB unbranded one bought from UK seller Play/Rakuten I simply never trusted. Slow to write to as well. Right from the start it wasn't recognised until I used Disk Management to initailise and format it. Seemed to work fine afterwards but I've had several incidents since where it has frozen when trying to open folders.

Yesterday it happened again so that was it; I spent a tedious 2hrs today copying the <30GB of content to a Sandisk and won't be using or buying any cheap, unbranded ones again.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

I'm not knocking Sandisk overall, but just their products that they chose to make Windows 8 compliant back in 2013 that rendered them as non-removable. Sandisk started with telling consumers to go back to where they purchased them for replacement, and only contact them if that fails.

Honestly, I don't remember every exact purchase transaction for accessories and when and from whom I've acquired them. As others in the Sandisk forums have suggested, Sandisk could have resolved this by making available a simple utility to 'flip the bit' so the product appears removable again.

 

[asendra]

I've just bought a sandisk extreme 64Gb coincidentally. I knew in advance about the bootable thing though, I just don't think I'll need it.
Would like to check if mine has it enabled or not, I'll give it a look if I find out how to.

I mainly wanted speed, and that it delivers, big time.

 

[bbhaag]

Wow asendra that is some really fast speeds. If you don't mind me asking what MB are you using? I'm barely able to eek out 60mb/s on my Asus board. It uses a Renesas controller though.

 

[asendra]

Wow asendra that is some really fast speeds. If you don't mind me asking what MB are you using? I'm barely able to eek out 60mb/s on my Asus board. It uses a Renesas controller though.

I'm using both a Macbook air and a custom built Hackintosh with a gigabyte ga-z87n-wifi

 

[bwbob]

the last pair I got I paid the couple of buck premium for the USB 3.0 version, def worth it