Good Quality Thumb Drives

I store important data on thumb drives such as money stuff so Its not on my computer and so the chances of it being stolen is greatly reduced but I find that not last very long before start to fail. I'd like to buy some good quality ones but I don't know what brand to buy and I don't find price a reliable indicator of quality.

What brands are the best quality??

thanks

Brands aren't always indicative of quality.

An actual specifications that indicates quality, reliability, and speed is class. The higher the class, the better the quality and faster the data transfer rate. For example, a Class 4 USB drive will have a transfer rate of ~4 MB/sec. Class 6 = ~6 MB/sec. Usually it isn't easy to find this information about a USB drive. However, the same information is given as "Read/Write Speeds" (although in a different not so obvious way). All of this also applies to SD cards.

Another indicator of USB drive quality is the actual construction of it. If it feels/looks cheap and flimsy, it probably won't withstand much abuse.

Here is a good starting place to search for USB drives: Newegg.com.

Hope this helps.

Originally posted by Lysis
Brands aren't always indicative of quality.

An actual specifications that indicates quality, reliability, and speed is class. The higher the class, the better the quality and faster the data transfer rate. For example, a Class 4 USB drive will have a transfer rate of ~4 MB/sec. Class 6 = ~6 MB/sec. Usually it isn't easy to find this information about a USB drive. However, the same information is given as "Read/Write Speeds" (although in a different not so obvious way). All of this also applies to SD cards.

Another indicator of USB drive quality is the actual construction of it. If it feels/looks cheap and flimsy, it probably won't withstand much abuse.

Here is a good starting place to search for USB drives: Newegg.com.

Hope this helps.

thanks for that

Go here and download this: Truecrypt
Install it and learn how to use it. It's very simple. With that, you can protect anything you have on your computer and you'll be able to stop worrying about thumb drives.

reply to post by trollz


Truecrypt is a wonderful tool. You can also use Truecrypt to encrypt the files on your thumb drives, if you so choose.

I forgot to add to my previous post: the OP should consider purchasing a USB extension cable. A lot of USB drives begin to fail due to abuse when they're plugged in directly to the computer (ex. bumping the USB drive while plugged in, how they're plugging it in). The USB extension cable will prevent most physical abuse the USB drive will encounter when plugged in.

Optionally, I suppose the USB drive could get a restraining order from the PC.

reply to post by learnatic


As well as keeping a copy on your PC/backup I'd suggest that you also put the encrypted file into a cloud-server, i.e. hotmail or gmail. Its easily accesible and you can access the data without your PC or USB stick etc.

Thanks everyone
cheers