Hardware Report Reveals Decline In Quality of USB Sticks, MicroSD Cards

[J65nko]

From https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/...-microsd-cards:

A new report from German data recovery company CBL found that devices using NAND chips from reputable brands are declining in quality, with reduced capacity and their manufacturers' logo removed. Furthermore, some USB sticks use the old trick of soldiering a microSD card onto the board.

[bsd-keith]

Last lot I bought (128GB) failed almost immediately, & the previous (1G) are starting to fail now.

I've moved over to using external HDD, SSD, & M2 SSD now.

I never liked micro SD cards, but so far mine are OK; used on RPi SBC.

[frcc]

Two 64 GB usb sticks failed less than a week after purchase from a Ebay seller.
Going to external HDD or SSD

Loose data, loose trust

[blackhole]

I've never regarded them as any kind of backup media or long term storage.

In terms of I/O they're very basic compared to an SSD, which is why they slow right down when copying large numbers of files, but perform acceptably with large single files.

in my view they were always designed as a cheap throwaway means of carrying certain commonly used files around or installing an OS. Over the years they have gotten cheaper and cheaper - so this decline comes as no surprise really.

[shep]

I've been playing with FreeCAD and a 3D resin printer and in this arena, usb drives and sd cards are main way to get your sliced files from your computer to the printer. Some chinese manufacturers, ie Bambu Labs and Creality will only connect to a wireless internet via their cloud servers. You can hack Bambu/Creality printers to get them on a local network at the expense of voiding your warranty.

I'm sticking with usb drives and would appreciate 2024 recommendations for reliable devices.

[e1-531g]

I would certainly avoid cheapest. This usually means buying the ones with moderate to large storage space (GB), even if I don't need it, because those have higher price margins.
But after a certain point you can just buy SSD instead, since those may be small in physical size nowadays.