Fast USB stick

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

Octopuss

Active Member
Jun 30, 2019
411
62
28
Czech republic
I don't buy these very often, and vast majority of them are slow as hell despite having USB3 stick on them. It's especially painful with small files.
I have Sandisk Extreme 32GB and it's very good, but I need some more, and this one is not even being made anymore.

Can anyone recommend me something reasonably priced, with good speeds while copying small files?
 

j_h_o

Active Member
Apr 21, 2015
644
179
43
California, US
I tried the Extreme Pro (128GB for ~$40) but the performance wasn't great, and the key stopped working after a few months.

I started getting m.2 NVMe or SATA enclosures and putting old/small 2280 SSDs into them. Because my laptops always come with a 128GB SSD that I remove/upgrade :) Roughly the same form factor...
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: T_Minus

Deslok

Well-Known Member
Jul 15, 2015
1,122
125
63
34
deslok.dyndns.org
DUDE, I asked about USB sticks. I didn't ask to be convinced to get xyz instead.
Bad performance on small files is a symptom of the controllers that usb sticks use, if you want small file performance you want a usb SSD stick form factor or otherwise. If there was one that was still "stick" style in production I was aware of I'd link you to that however there aren't any currently most of the vendors have moved to a small box(pack of gum sized or so) with a cable because it lets them recycle their m.2 ssd designs with a usb to sata or usb to nvme bridge chip. Even the best stick i've worked with(mushkin ventura ultra) can't keep up with a bad usb ssd the second second small files are in the equation.
 

Octopuss

Active Member
Jun 30, 2019
411
62
28
Czech republic
I know most USB sticks suck in this regard, but there are some decent ones, like the Sandisk I mentioned. I just need something similar.
I had no idea USB SSDs existed, but whatever. I need something I can boot from as well, and an USB stick is a guaranteed to work.
Besides, SSDs are significantly more expensive, and I don't want to spend more than some $30.
 

thingy2098

New Member
Mar 16, 2018
15
8
3
41
The biggest problem is that many USB 3.0 sticks overheat already - the form factor just can't dissipate the heat, and adding a faster controller with more channels and bigger buffers is only going to make that problem worse.

This is going to be the closest thing I think you're going to find, although it is discontinued - it's large and aluminum because it has to be at that performance level.

Mushkin Enhanced - Ventura Ultra

If you can't find one of those, this will be your next best bet:

Flash Voyager GTX USB Drive
 

Octopuss

Active Member
Jun 30, 2019
411
62
28
Czech republic
The biggest problem is that many USB 3.0 sticks overheat already - the form factor just can't dissipate the heat, and adding a faster controller with more channels and bigger buffers is only going to make that problem worse.

This is going to be the closest thing I think you're going to find, although it is discontinued - it's large and aluminum because it has to be at that performance level.

Mushkin Enhanced - Ventura Ultra

If you can't find one of those, this will be your next best bet:

Flash Voyager GTX USB Drive
I don't think overheating is a problem, because you don't typically write tens of GBs at once.

It seems the Voyager is discontinued for something newer, with slightly different product code. Hopefully it's not worse. It is quite a bit more expensive than what I am willing to pay, but it seems to be on par with Sandisk which is good.
I wonder what the successor to the Mushkin is.
 
Last edited:

thingy2098

New Member
Mar 16, 2018
15
8
3
41
Also, for comparison, you can sort by 4k-write MB/S here:

USB UserBenchmarks - 639 USB Flash Drives Compared

You can see the difference between the 'performance' USB sticks that still use a super low power embedded controller versus the ones that have an actual desktop-class SSD controller built in.

You'll see some that have lightning fast 200+MB/s sequential writes with large files... but then completely fall apart with 4k file sizes to 1/100th that speed.

The Corsair and Mushkin ones I linked previously are actual SSDs with a USB bridge, and the 4k write performance really shows it, even if they are a bit slow for large sequential writes.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Octopuss

Octopuss

Active Member
Jun 30, 2019
411
62
28
Czech republic
It's also interesting how claimed sequential speeds vastly differ from what people actually benchmark... And 380MB/s claimed and 200-something real doesn't even seem like a bad result, heh.

Fortunately I never use USB sticks to transfer films or anything, so as long as it's like over 100MB/s it's fine by me. Largest stuff I typically copy are Windows images for installation media.
 

Deslok

Well-Known Member
Jul 15, 2015
1,122
125
63
34
deslok.dyndns.org
The biggest problem is that many USB 3.0 sticks overheat already - the form factor just can't dissipate the heat, and adding a faster controller with more channels and bigger buffers is only going to make that problem worse.

This is going to be the closest thing I think you're going to find, although it is discontinued - it's large and aluminum because it has to be at that performance level.

Mushkin Enhanced - Ventura Ultra

If you can't find one of those, this will be your next best bet:

Flash Voyager GTX USB Drive
I actually reviewed the ventura ultra ages ago, it does suffer from some overheating in my experience but not enough to suggest it's a bad device, if you're curious what's inside I took some pictures(although it was prior to acquiring a proper camera so they're a bit fuzzier than i'd like) If it was still a production device i'd have suggested it as opposed to the adata drive.
Ventura Ultra USB 3.0 SSD Review - Pocketables
 

Octopuss

Active Member
Jun 30, 2019
411
62
28
Czech republic
It seems like every single decent USB stick got EOL'ed and replaced with something significantly more inferior, based on what I could see on Userbenchmark. Just WTF.
 

EffrafaxOfWug

Radioactive Member
Feb 12, 2015
1,394
511
113
It seems like every single decent USB stick got EOL'ed and replaced with something significantly more inferior, based on what I could see on Userbenchmark. Just WTF.
That's why the first recommendation of the thread was to build your own enclosure, even if it wasn't answering your question - people have simply stopped making USB sticks with half-decent controllers it seems; hurrah for the race to the bottom. Most people don't care enough about speed or reliability to pay extra for it, even if they're not just plain ignorant of the differences in the first place.

I bought a few of the 64 and 128GB Sandisk Extreme's when I saw they were going out of production and there was nothing on the horizon that looked like a decent replacement, but even they're not brilliant for small files. For anything requiring decent performance I built a small mSATA enclosure with a Crucial SSD in it.

Amazingly enough I dug out my very first USB drive - a heavily used 128MB USB1 that made everyone's eyes pop out of their heads back in around 2001 - and it not only still works but all of the files were readable.