Thumb Drives

Date: [10th Sep 2024]
Categories: [linux]

I just tried 3 different 512 GB USB flash drives for my small linux arm server because it only has a 32gb drive installed and this is hardcoded to the mainboard so I am unable to upgrade. Everything I can do is to upgrade via usb 2.0 drives and because of power consumption and loudness, I use usb flash drives. All these sticks came preformatted with exfat or fat32 filesystem, because it is the lowest common denominator for filesharing between windows and linux / mac os.

All of the sticks were broken. As I tried to format them with ext4 they were going down on their knees. The first one was impossible to format, the second one could be formatted but as I wanted to mount, there was no superblock and there was no recognizable filesystem. Right after formatting. And the third one had writing issues and was only able to copy with a transfer speed of 3 mb/sec on usb 2.0 port. And after I copied some testfiles, the stick could not be mounted anymore.

So I sent them back. And ordered a fourth drive.

And the fourth usb flash drive works as expected. And because of that, I write down the link to amazon. SanDisk Ultra USB 3.0 Flash-Laufwerk 512 GB:

Marke SanDisk
Speicherkapazität 512 GB
Hardwareschnittstelle USB 3.0
Besonderes Merkmal Verschlüsselt
Schreibgeschwindigkeit 130 MB/Sec

I am happy with him and don't blame me for using usb flash drives - I can assess the risk well. The server does not have any sensitive or important data. It's for fun and vintage computing.