which Flash Drive I must buy for FreeBSD and OpenBSD

[mfaridi]

I WANT buy Flash Drive 8 GB* I see in internet and see many models but I am not sure which one is better
and which one has high speed and work very fast in FreeBSD and OpenBSD
six month ago I buy A-Data but this models has very low speed in FreeBSD* and OpenBSD and Linux

but A-Data speed in Windows is good
I want buy Very fast Flash Drive

[roddierod]

I have a Verbatim 8GB Flash drive. The speed seem faster on FreeBSD than Windows.

http://www.verbatim.com/usb/

[graudeejs]

I usggest: Never ever, buy Klingston U3 Data Traveler Smart and that kind... infact, i will never buy Kilngsons flash drives anymore.... unless i test them before i buy.....

Some of them have virutal CD-RAM/ROM or whatever.... and it makes problems when you want to mount it on Linux/FreeBSD.....
To be able to mount flash, i had to restart my PC.....


Later i changed it to my friends flash...

[dk_netsvil]

I've got an A-Data 8GB flash drive and I can't complain about the speed - 25-30 Mbps, writes are a little slower.

I also suggest staying away from Kingston - I had a 2 GB flash drive that did not live up to my expectations.

[18Googol2]

If you are looking for a good, cheap flash drive, have a look at PQI brand.

The transfer rate of the PQI stuff is much more faster than some brandname one, e.g Kingston, Toshiba...I have bought about 5 PQI products so far (memory card, usb stick...) and have nothing to complain.

Btw, avoid U3 flash drive, its just a gimmick marketing

[Carpetsmoker]

I also suggest staying away from Kingston - I had a 2 GB flash drive that did not live up to my expectations.

I usggest: Never ever, buy Klingston U3 Data Traveler Smart and that kind... infact, i will never buy Kilngsons flash drives anymore.... unless i test them before i buy.....

Perhaps you mean Kingston?
I don't know about flash drives, but Kingston RAM is pretty good quality ... I fact, all Kingston RAM comes with a lifetime warranty...
Not sure how much warranty you get on USB stick, I need flash to view the Kingston page, *sigh*, but the encrypted business USB flash drives have 5 year warranty ... Which is not bad for a flash drive...

[graudeejs]

Originally Posted by Carpetsmoker

Perhaps you mean Kingston?
I don't know about flash drives, but Kingston RAM is pretty good quality ... I fact, all Kingston RAM comes with a lifetime warranty...
Not sure how much warranty you get on USB stick, I need flash to view the Kingston page, *sigh*, but the encrypted business USB flash drives have 5 year warranty ... Which is not bad for a flash drive...

Thanks for correcting me....
My U5 had 5 or 10 year warranty (don't remember)
Also Kingston RAM is good

[BSDfan666]

Klingston... Klingon memory~!

[18Googol2]

Originally Posted by Carpetsmoker

Perhaps you mean Kingston?
I don't know about flash drives, but Kingston RAM is pretty good quality ... I fact, all Kingston RAM comes with a lifetime warranty...
Not sure how much warranty you get on USB stick, I need flash to view the Kingston page, *sigh*, but the encrypted business USB flash drives have 5 year warranty ... Which is not bad for a flash drive...

As the rule of thumb, better judge computing stuff by its chipset rather than its brand

Nothing wrong with Kingston RAM. IIRC, they use Hynix chipset which is used for many other RAM manufacturers, but flash drive is another story

[tad1214]

Avoid the MicroCenter flash drives if you want speed, mine are typically under 1MB/s, However, 8Gb for $25 was an acceptable trade off for just backing up my music.

[Carpetsmoker]

Originally Posted by dk_netsvil

I also suggest staying away from Kingston - I had a 2 GB flash drive that did not live up to my expectations.

Originally Posted by 18Googol2

Nothing wrong with Kingston RAM. IIRC, they use Hynix chipset which is used for many other RAM manufacturers, but flash drive is another story

I bought a 8GB Kingston DataTraveler flash drive ... Works fine ...

[18Googol2]

I just bought one too. It was an impulse buy actually, doh, it was as cheap as chips, only 15 bucks including delivery. I could always give it to my niece later on if I realise I have no use of it anyway. But mine is only 4Gb.

It works fine (both read and write speed) if formatted as ufs, but BLOODY slow if formatted as FAT32. I googled and somebody said the chipset is not fully supported under FreeBSD

Do you experience the same problem?

[phoenix]

The branch doesn't really matter, the individual chips all come from the same small group of manufacturers.

What's most important is to find out whether it uses MLC (multi-level chip) or SLC (single-level chip). This is one of the more important things that affect throughput and longevity.

MLC is a lot less expensive to manufacture, but is a lot slower than SLC. These also have lifetimes in the 10,000-100,000 range for writes.

SLC is a bit more expensive, but is very fast, and has lifetimes in the 100,000-millions range of writes.

What really sucks, is how hard it is to find out which style of chips is used in a $40 flash drive.

As for the whole U3 thing: they all come with a "remove U3" utility that will reformat the stick to be one large, plain, USB drive. I have a bunch of Cruzer Micros that I've removed the U3 bits from.

It'd be really nice if you could test drive USB sticks in-store to see which ones work best.

[drhowarddrfine]

As a side note, my wife and son were given two throw-ins from somewhere. No name on the things but they work on FreeBSD. Sometimes "they work" is winning the war.

[mfaridi]

Thanks all guys after many search I buy ATV made by OCZ .
I do not know OCZ use SLC or MLC but speed of copy and paste is good and enjoy it .
this Flash Drive is 8GB.

[IdOp]

Being a bit of a Luddite when it comes to modern hardware, I have a related question about USB memory stick things. What, if anything, is the difference between:

* flash drive
* thumb drive
* jump drive
* pen drive
* <any others?>

Oh, and will USB 2.0 be backward compatible to original USB on mobo? Thanks in advance for any replies!

[BSDfan666]

Those all refer to the same thing, just colloquialisms I guess.. though the first can refer to "any" device that uses flash memory.

As for the USB 2.0 question, I've owned a few USB 2.0 hard drive enclosures that worked poorly (or not at all) with 1.1, but technically they're supposed to be backwards compatible.. just a lot slower.

Hope that helps..

[IdOp]

Originally Posted by BSDfan666

Those all refer to the same thing, just colloquialisms I guess.. though the first can refer to "any" device that uses flash memory.

That's good to know; was hoping it would be that simple.

As for the USB 2.0 question, I've owned a few USB 2.0 hard drive enclosures that worked poorly (or not at all) with 1.1, but technically they're supposed to be backwards compatible.. just a lot slower.

The wording of my question was poor and open-ended, as I only had USB memory sticks in mind, but the more general backward compatibility question is also interesting.

Hope that helps..

It does, thanks again!

[Carpetsmoker]

My Kingston DataTraveler broke, it doesn't do anything except get very hot (!)

I now have a 16GB PQI Cooldrive U339, it was just 5 euros more expensive, and it also has a switch to put the drive in read-only mode (No such thing as `mount -o ro' on Windows) ...

It works fine (both read and write speed) if formatted as ufs, but BLOODY slow if formatted as FAT32. I googled and somebody said the chipset is not fully supported under FreeBSD

Do you experience the same problem?

I only have USB1, so it's slow in any case ...

btw.
I do have problems with my Philips MP3 player, when I copy files they sound distorted ... It works fine with Windows (Multiboot) ...