USB memory sticks are getting worse | Hacker News Reader

USB memory sticks are getting worse

theregister.com

28 pointsbookofjoe10 comments

Thankfully NVMe enclosures are dirt cheap now, so if you can deal with a little more bulk you can adapt an SSD from any reputable manufacturer into an extremely fast and reliable USB drive. Ideally look for an SSD with onboard DRAM though - drives without their own DRAM typically borrow memory from the host instead, but that trick doesn't work over USB, so their performance is degraded.

I feel like this is not ideal for an external enclosure. Sudden power loss could lead to corruption and data loss if the data is buffered in DRAM.

It will depend on the SSD controller, but AFAIK the DRAM usually isn't used for write caching. It's used to hold a copy of the bookkeeping structures which map virtual block locations to physical flash locations, which are mirrored on the non-volatile flash anyway, but are much quicker to random-read from DRAM.

If you use a DRAM-less drive in a situation where it can't DMA host memory, such as in a USB enclosure, it has to read those structures from flash on-the-fly which is obviously slower.

Compact aluminum enclosure for 2242 SSDs isn't much larger than a USB drive, https://www.amazon.com/ElecGear-2242-Hard-Enclosure-Magenets...

In the yee olden days floppy discs were exactly the same. Originally they were extremely high quality but on the expensive side.

Then they became a lot cheaper as the market flooded and even the old reliable brands went downhill.

Eventually I had some that were 10+ years old and worked flawlessly, while other new ones would fail after a month or so.

They're examining failed USB sticks, no? How can they draw conclusions about USB sticks in general?

>If flash media is to be used to store anything for an extended period, use high-quality storage hardware, and keep it somewhere cool, as high temperatures may accelerate data loss.

Interesting, I never thought of that.

Welp, time for a RAIStick...

> and the manufacturer's logo removed from the chip

pretty sure they are fake chips that never had a logo... usually they print a fake logo though, don't they?

You'll find counterfeit chips stamped with a legit part number, you get blank chips that never had markings, and sometimes they even go to the ridiculous step of using a laser to etch away all the existing markings.

Most of the time it only makes it a little more difficult to reverse engieer what the part is.

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