256 GB Pen Drive Suggestions (Single Side USB vs Dual Side USB + Type-C)

Futureized

Futureized

Skilled
Hello,
Kindly suggest 256 GB pen drive. Pen drive shall be reformatted often due to nature of work.
This is on my list for purchase:

SanDisk Ultra USB 3.0 256 GB Pen Drive (SDDD3-256G-I35, Black, Silver)
https://www.amazon.in/gp/product/B08KYGZMNQ/

i guess this is better option ?

SanDisk Ultra Dual USB Drive 3.1, SDDDC2-256G-I35 256GB, USB 3.1/Type C Reversible Connector, Retractable Design, Type-C OTG-Enabled Android Devices, 5Y (Black, Silver)

As I have a Type C mobile phone
 
Last edited:
Futureized said:
Hello,
Kindly suggest 256 GB pen drive. Pen drive shall be reformatted often due to nature of work.
This is on my list for purchase:

SanDisk Ultra USB 3.0 256 GB Pen Drive (SDDD3-256G-I35, Black, Silver)
https://www.amazon.in/gp/product/B08KYGZMNQ/

i guess this is better option ?

SanDisk Ultra Dual USB Drive 3.1, SDDDC2-256G-I35 256GB, USB 3.1/Type C Reversible Connector, Retractable Design, Type-C OTG-Enabled Android Devices, 5Y (Black, Silver)

As I have a Type C mobile phone
Click to expand...
You can't go wrong with sandisk usb pen drives, I've never tried their type-c type but I'm sure they're good and reliable.
 
Check Samsung Duo plus pen drive. It’s a little weird with separate type-c adapter, but it’s performance is very good.
I’ve been using 128gb model.. doesn’t heat up as fast as the sandisk model.
 
Futureized said:
i guess this is better option ?

SanDisk Ultra Dual USB Drive 3.1, SDDDC2-256G-I35 256GB, USB 3.1/Type C Reversible Connector, Retractable Design, Type-C OTG-Enabled Android Devices, 5Y (Black, Silver)

As I have a Type C mobile phone
Click to expand...
Very practical to have c and A ports like that. But how do you carry it?

I use a Sony for several years now that goes on a keychain.

The one thing to remember is always, always unmount the drive before disconnecting the drive either the phone or PC.

Don't just yank it out.
 
You need 256GB and you said you will have to constantly format it due to the nature of work, so I'm assuming you will be filling it full pretty often, otherwise you would have gone for smaller size, right? If you plan to copy 200GB of data to a regular SanDisk pen drive, then you are going to have a bad time.

I have a 64GB SanDisk dual (microUSB & USB-A) pendrive which you linked, the speeds drop to 20 MBps once it heats (after 5GB transfer or so). If I pause the transfer, then it cools down in a few minutes and on resuming, the speed jumps to 40s IIRC. I own a 128GB SanDisk Ultra and it gives around 60MBps when cool but very soon drops to around 20MBps. All SanDisk pendrives (and other companies too) heat up pretty quickly and become very slow.

Samsung Duo Plus seems a nice pendrive but it very costly (almost 4 times SanDisk Ultra).

If you need to regularly copy large amount of data in one go and don't want to wait for hours to get it filled, and if space/size is not an issue, I recommend buying a cheap SSD like Crucial BX500 240GB (₹2000) and putting in a Orico Transparent case for 500 or so rupees.

Futureized said:
i guess this is better option ?
Click to expand...
Among the above two options, yes USB-C seems a better option. Micro USB is obsolete now.
 
john1911 said:
You need 256GB and you said you will have to constantly format it due to the nature of work, so I'm assuming you will be filling it full pretty often, otherwise you would have gone for smaller size, right? If you plan to copy 200GB of data to a regular SanDisk pen drive, then you are going to have a bad time.

I have a 64GB SanDisk dual (microUSB & USB-A) pendrive which you linked, the speeds drop to 20 MBps once it heats (after 5GB transfer or so). If I pause the transfer, then it cools down in a few minutes and on resuming, the speed jumps to 40s IIRC. I own a 128GB SanDisk Ultra and it gives around 60MBps when cool but very soon drops to around 20MBps. All SanDisk pendrives (and other companies too) heat up pretty quickly and become very slow.
Click to expand...
I faced a similar issue with the same SanDisk pen drive and also this model

john1911 said:
If you need to regularly copy large amount of data in one go and don't want to wait for hours to get it filled, and if space/size is not an issue, I recommend buying a cheap SSD like Crucial BX500 240GB (₹2000) and putting in a Orico Transparent case for 500 or so rupees.
Click to expand...
@Futureized This is a much better option if portability is not an issue. I have been using the same (Samsung ssd) for 2 years and am glad this works a lot better than pen drives. It is better as long as u don't need to have a pocketable drive.
 
john1911 said:
I have a 64GB SanDisk dual (microUSB & USB-A) pendrive which you linked, the speeds drop to 20 MBps once it heats (after 5GB transfer or so). If I pause the transfer, then it cools down in a few minutes and on resuming, the speed jumps to 40s IIRC. I own a 128GB SanDisk Ultra and it gives around 60MBps when cool but very soon drops to around 20MBps. All SanDisk pendrives (and other companies too) heat up pretty quickly and become very slow.
Click to expand...
What if you attach it to a male-female cable? So USB port-cable-drive. Idea is to decouple the PC USB port from the drive.

As far as speeds go, the fastest is for big files. When you're dealing with lots of small ones the speed drops.

To the point that even having a 5Gpbs cable is no faster than plain USB2
 
blr_p said:
What if you attach it to a male-female cable? So USB port-cable-drive. Idea is to decouple the PC USB port from the drive.

As far as speeds go, the fastest is for big files. When you're dealing with lots of small ones the speed drops.

To the point that even having a 5Gpbs cable is no faster than plain USB2
Click to expand...
I didn't get you?

The flash storage chip gets hot to such an extent that the performance drops tremendously. And I'm talking about sequential writes.
 
john1911 said:
If you need to regularly copy large amount of data in one go and don't want to wait for hours to get it filled, and if space/size is not an issue, I recommend buying a cheap SSD like Crucial BX500 240GB (₹2000) and putting in a Orico Transparent case for 500 or so rupees.
Click to expand...

Transfer speed is 540Mb/s or 60MB/s


Uses 5Gbps

What about NvmE drives


Speed is 10Gbps


Up to 2000MB/s so this drive will be a minimum of 10-20x faster than the SSD
john1911 said:
I didn't get you?

The flash storage chip gets hot to such an extent that the performance drops tremendously. And I'm talking about sequential writes.
Click to expand...
I was wondering whether putting a cable in between drive and port might slow the heating
 
blr_p said:
Amazon.in
Transfer speed is 540Mb/s or 60MB/s

https://www.amazon.in/ORICO-Enclosure-Optimized-Transparent-01-Transparent/dp/B01N48791I
Uses 5Gbps
Click to expand...
You got it all wrong. No SSD gives 60MBps sequential writes, HDDs give almost double of that. BX500 gives approx 450-500MBps when connected via SATA3.

I was talking about this enclosure.
It regularly goes for approx ₹500.

There are plenty other cheaper enclosures too which perform like this one. There is no need to pay extra for USB-C 2.5" enclosure as there won't be any performance improvement over the regular microUSB3.0 enclosure.

He can opt for the NVMe drive + enclosure but the enclosure itself comes very costly, although it is more portable than 2.5" SSD. And no, the speed won't be 20 times that of 2.5"SSD. In real world performance, it might be twice or a little more than that.
 
john1911 said:
I tried doing this by plugging it into a USB Hub. The source of heat isn't the USB port. The source of heat is the flash storage chip on the pen drive.
Click to expand...
I've had better performance with the extreme variant of those drives. But this is microsd. Not pen drive.
 
john1911 said:
You need 256GB and you said you will have to constantly format it due to the nature of work, so I'm assuming you will be filling it full pretty often, otherwise you would have gone for smaller size, right? If you plan to copy 200GB of data to a regular SanDisk pen drive, then you are going to have a bad time.

I have a 64GB SanDisk dual (microUSB & USB-A) pendrive which you linked, the speeds drop to 20 MBps once it heats (after 5GB transfer or so). If I pause the transfer, then it cools down in a few minutes and on resuming, the speed jumps to 40s IIRC. I own a 128GB SanDisk Ultra and it gives around 60MBps when cool but very soon drops to around 20MBps. All SanDisk pendrives (and other companies too) heat up pretty quickly and become very slow.

Samsung Duo Plus seems a nice pendrive but it very costly (almost 4 times SanDisk Ultra).

If you need to regularly copy large amount of data in one go and don't want to wait for hours to get it filled, and if space/size is not an issue, I recommend buying a cheap SSD like Crucial BX500 240GB (₹2000) and putting in a Orico Transparent case for 500 or so rupees.


Among the above two options, yes USB-C seems a better option. Micro USB is obsolete now.
Click to expand...
Hi @john1911, @Ssreek
Thanks for detailed explanation, appreciated. I will harldy ever transfer 200 GB at one go. At most 50 to 100 GB in multiple transfers.
Mostly kept for backup to transfer videos/photos to relatives hence ordered a large drive for future.

Most important reason to order DUAL (USB + Type C) was to easily transfer files official/non-official between my Mobile/PC required in case of travel etc. Even kid has a TYPE-C port *so useful for him as well* he formats mobile once a month and has around 100 + GB data easily

Mostly i reformat the pen drive once/twice a week to test various things (this is important for drives life)
If other drive as suggested by you supports TYPE-C as well and gives better performance upon lots of reformats will purchase same.
Not really techy in this things, will follow your guidance.
 
If you are okay waiting for approx. 1min per GB for file transfers, then you can go ahead with the pen drive. Say, you got to transfer 60GBs of data in one go, then are you okay waiting for 1 hour for it to transfer? If not, then get an SSD + enclosure, you can buy a USB-C/microUSB OTG cable to connect it to mobile phones.

If portability/size is not an issue, then 256GB pen drive doesn't make much sense as they are above ₹2000 and just by adding a few hundred rupees, you can get SSD + enclosure which will give you 10-20 times more performance. 128GB pendrive makes more sense as they are relatively cheap.
 
john1911 said:
If you are okay waiting for approx. 1min per GB for file transfers, then you can go ahead with the pen drive. Say, you got to transfer 60GBs of data in one go, then are you okay waiting for 1 hour for it to transfer? If not, then get an SSD + enclosure, you can buy a USB-C/microUSB OTG cable to connect it to mobile phones.

If portability/size is not an issue, then 256GB pen drive doesn't make much sense as they are above ₹2000 and just by adding a few hundred rupees, you can get SSD + enclosure which will give you 10-20 times more performance. 128GB pendrive makes more sense as they are relatively cheap.
Click to expand...
Thanks john, Bought the drive last week and quite ok with same, kid uses the same more then me..
Important reason to purchase was frequent reformat as well.
 
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