Over the years I’ve had a few flash drives and even though I never used then all that much, the write speeds are way to slow and they seem to be manufactured e-waste these days. I’ve used my currently flash drive maybe a handful of times and it’s done
I’m looking for something with decent write and read speed that I can kinda sorta use like a flash drive. I’ll mostly use it for Windows or Linux install ISOs. I’ve used old 1Tb 2.5 HDDs in the past purely because it’s so much faster than a flash drive, but I’d like something more convenient if possible.
Right now a cheap 2.5" SSD is what I’m looking at, but 120Gb SSD feels so wasteful…
I can’t be the only one looking for a decent flash drive and I’m hoping someone here might have some suggestions?
Basically, a good m.2 enclosure with an m.2 drive has significantly better speeds versus a regular usb stick. And although bigger, they are still something to carry in a backpack (or even a pocket).
This is what I thought at first. Then came a realization that windows to go and stuff sit quite nicely on such a device.
Been looking around to see what I can get locally and below are 2 options and I’m thinking the first option is the best.
I would prefer to purchase locally so it’s easy to return if needed and Takealot has a 7 day no questions asked returns policy.
The 2.5" SSD option is a bit cheaper and heat should not be an issue due to the limited transfer speeds of SATA 3. It is slightly bigger, but not really any less or more convenient than the m.2 option. I chose this enclosure because it’s at least a brand I’ve heard of and used before and it’s using common USB C and A.
The M.2 option is more expensive and it’s harder to find a 128Gb SSD that is not some e-waste brand in the M.2 standard. I liked the idea of getting the a small 64Gb m.2 2230 with an equally small enclosure, but I’m not really finding that.
I’m leaning towards the 2.5" option as it’s cheaper and replacement drives are easier to get from decent-ish brands. Yes, the M.2 option will probably be faster, but the SATA 3 speeds is more than plenty for what I plan to use it for.
Only question left is, how stable is a 2.5" SSD on USB power? I’m assuming fine?
In my opinion, buying anything SATA based these days will just be a regretted decision later. It already takes me like 30 minutes or so to copy 1TB of data between my 1TB 2.5" SATA SSD and 2TB m.2 NVMe Kingston drive, and NVMe vs SSD are pretty cheap. We’re talking like a $5-$15 difference, hardly even a lunch.
At that point 2.5" SATA SSDs are pretty much pointless in 2025.
I’ve basically stopped buying USB flash drives. They are generally advertised as USB 3.2 gen whatever, but work like crap, less than USB 2.0 speed.
My current lineup is
2,5" HDD for bulk data
couple of m.2 SSDs in an enclosure, good for fast transfers and made with old SSDs
Samsung T7 SSD, super fast, compact
Kingston DataTraveler MAX, super compact, just a bit bigger than regular USB drive. Basically an SSD, but not as fast as others
Most of the time, I just grab Kingston and go. Apparently Transcend makes even more compact one with 5 year warranty. But I’ve never seen it so I cant say much about it.
I’m using 1 and 2 TB 2280s in 10 and 20 Gb/s enclosures. The 10 Gb are inexpensive and 1 GB/s isn’t fast enough to be thermally challenging. HWCooling.net does some enclosure tests but they’re mostly fairly similar.
Could go with an SSD stick or 2.5 enclosure but the sticks are thermally limited and 2.5s cost the basically same as good 2280s here, so you a pay a premium for unknown flash and without the modularity.
There’s a bunch of 2230 10 Gb enclosures. Out of the ones I can get Sabrent’s is probably the least iffy. Fixed cable, though.
Don’t know any 2230s with DRAM, though, it’s my understanding HMB’s not supported by USB mass storage. Supposedly there’s thus a benefit to DRAMed drives but USB’s slow enough and high enough latency I’m not sure it matters.
Main concern I have with 2230s is the enclosure thermals is the enclosure thermals might well end up worse than a decent SSD stick.
Bought some Sandisk 64 GBs last year (Ultras IIRC but I’d have to check). They hit their claimed 130 MB/s for a few seconds, then drop to ~75 GB/s. Haven’t tried 430 MB/s rated ones but some of them do bench that high, though I’d expect they’d thermal throttle to ~75 or whatever fairly quickly as well. Better than some of the older sticks I have that get hot and start to error out.
At least with a metal shell the heat gets to the outside rather than being insulated by plastic. Silverstone MS12 and MS13 are easily the most effective thermal design in passive enclosures but are expensive (MS12-40G has a fan). I felt MS12 was worth it for large 20 Gb transfers.
For moving tens of GB at 10 Gb lower cost spring loaded designs using hard pads have been fine and, while I haven’t needed to do really big copies with them, I think 1 GB/s is slow enough the poor thermal contact wouldn’t be an issue.
Those Kingston DataTraveler MAX looks pretty good, but I can’t find a good local place that have them. I found it on a local tech site for a decent price, but it’s out of stock and then the other local site I found it on I don’t trust.
For the most part I’ll be using it to install Windows or Linux. I rarely have to transfer large amounts of data and my house has 1Gb ethernet throughout. Right now I’ve been without a working flash drive for well over a year and I used an old 2.5" HDD as a boot disc once.
That said, although the M.2 option is slightly more expensive, I’ll go for that as it’s probably slightly more future proof. I doubt the 2.5" standard is going anywhere any time soon, but with an M.2 drive you can at least see what is printed on the chips
