SSD-grade USB thumb drive?

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Cheddoleum

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Feb 19, 2014
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I'm looking for a compact USB drive with a consistent, documented SSD-grade controller and NAND. Obviously it's easy enough to hang a USB adapter from an SSD, but something a little closer to a thumb drive form factor and which is known to stay inside the 2.5w envelope of a single USB connection would be preferred. There are a few around that are pitched at that market (VisionTek, Corsair Flash Voyager) but they don't really commit to what's inside.

Basically I want something pocketable for sneakernetting between locations that I can actually trust and get sustainable performance out of and repeated use as an OS / installation drive.

Thinking of getting a USB NGFF or mSATA enclosure, there seem to be a few around. An NGFF model that takes up to the 80mm units is probably best, as the smaller form factors sometimes sacrifice things like DRAM to meet the space requirements, with resulting performance impact. Has anyone played with these?
 
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pyro_

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Oct 4, 2013
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You could always look at the Mushkin Ventura Ultra, it is USB3 and has a sandforce controller. One thing to note is that they do get hot when in use
Ventura Ultra
 
Patrick

Patrick

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Cheddoleum said:
Thinking of getting a USB NGFF or mSATA enclosure, there seem to be a few around. An NGFF model that takes up to the 80mm units is probably best, as the smaller form factors sometimes sacrifice things like DRAM to meet the space requirements, with resulting performance impact. Has anyone played with these?
Click to expand...
I have been using this one: Amazon.com: Sabrent USB 3.0 mSATA II or III/6G SSD Enclosure Adapter [Support UASP] (EC-UKMS): Computers & Accessories

It works reasonably well with the Crucial M500 120GB I have in it and is fairly small.
 
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tubeamps

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Dec 1, 2014
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I've been using the same enclosure with a 128GB M550 since May or so. For under $100 I couldn't ask for more.

Until recently the drive was encrypted with BitLocker and I was simultaneously running 2 VM Workstation instances from it on a laptop that didn't have room for another drive. The load wasn't particularly write intensive, but this setup far exceeded my expectations and my experiences with any regular USB flash drives. The enclosure did get fairly hot at times, but since the drive didn't house critical data I never worried too much. When possible I set the enclosure on metal to dissipate heat. I should check the SMART data on the drive, but I've seen no signs of trouble.
 
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tubeamps

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Dec 1, 2014
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Also worth mentioning I ignored Windows 8.1 Pro's warnings and enabled the write cache. I made sure to always shut down my VMs and eject the drive. While it helped performance it is probably a terrible idea if you care about your data or are using an SSD without power protection.
 
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Cheddoleum

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Feb 19, 2014
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Thanks for all the feedback. I've since had a new 180GB Intel 530 M.2 NGFF become available -- bought it to resurrect a dead Ultrabook which turned out to have bigger problems. So I've ordered this to wrap around it:

MyDigitalSSD Bullet Proof 30mm 2230 42mm 2242 60mm 2260 80mm 2280 M.2 NGFF USB 3.0 Adapter Enclosure | My Digital Discount

Reportedly the M.2 standard has a native USB3 interface, which suggests to me that the adapter is "thin" and I won't be depending on it for USB translation performance. We'll see how it goes.
 
andrewbedia

andrewbedia

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Jan 11, 2013
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Have you looked at the SanDisk Extreme USB 3.0? I get about 200MB/s read and write on a 64GB one that sits on my keychain.
 
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Cheddoleum

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Feb 19, 2014
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That's good to know about the Sandisk; this isn't the last time I'll need something like this.

The enclosure arrived the other day and I've installed the 80mm Intel 530 M.2 180GB SSD. Getting typically 210MB/s writes and 375MB/s reads in real-life file transfers over USB3.

It's bulkier than a thumb drive, though -- about the same length as a bare 2.5" SSD and maybe half the width, plus it takes an external cable. It's aluminum so it should dissipate heat well, and it's nice to be using a drive with known performance and endurance characteristics.
 
T_Minus

T_Minus

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Feb 15, 2015
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I have 10+ Sandisk Extreme USB 3.0 too, great thumb drives so far.

Patrick's device looks nifty though for $13, going to have to try that :)
 
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