Rant USB Flash drivers

So just bought a flash drive, because all the ones i have are dead/dying, stick in to pc, start transferring data, and its dead.....

Am I the only one so "lucky" with USB flashdrives (and sd cards come to think of it)? Out of ~10 I last bought only couple were without faults, other had to go through RMA at least once (or refund outright) to have a somewhat usable storage device. And then the next time I need one, the ones I have somehow died while just laying unused for couple of months - repeat buying&rma process again. Doesn't matter what manufacturer - tried sandisk, kingston, lexar, adata. I probably should just start buying them in batches, pickout the working ones and refund the rest...

 

I really don't recall having one fail or be DOA, and this is from a hodge-podge of devices/brands over the years. Does make me wonder whether there is some other factor at play given your failure rate, albeit just being very very unlucky can't be discounted.

 

very rarely had a usb drive die on me.. they end up going through the wash and all sorts and dont die.

As above, maybe there is more at play here like a faulty USB port thats putting out to much voltage or something random like that?

 

Had loads of cheap USB drives fail on me, from USB 1 holding a few Meg to many gigs of USB 3 - Now I only use Kingston and Samsung and NEVER from Amazon (too many reports of fakes in the amazon marketplace).

I'd say you're not unlucky, those that have no problems with them ever are super-lucky,

 

I use a fair few of various brands and formats at work and all have been fine.

Have you, perhaps, wronged a witch in the past and got cursed?

 

I've had plenty fail on me, usually kingston ones. I've never really thought about it until this thread popped up though.
I'm a person who just thinks "sod it, I'll just buy another" so I've never been overly bothered about them failing, but now my USB drives are all smallish SSD's in a usb3 caddy, which so far have never failed.

 

I've never had one fail that didn't turn out to be fake. As such I just suck up the cost and buy from retailers (not Amazon, Ebay) when needed. I had a good one once that showed as having the full amount of space available, wrote everything just fine, then showed nothing when plugged into the next device. That one was a doozy, also fake.

 

No single failure in at least 2 decades, in fact still using near daily an OCZ drive I won here in a photo comp prize back in 2007.

 

All mine were bought from local retailers and the failures were on multiple PC's, so "USB port thats putting out to much voltage" is very doubtfull. Thought I still have <1GB flashdrives that work, this whole mess started around then 4GB ones became the norm.

This might be the most plausable explanation.

 

Worst offenders for DOA's IME are SanDisk. Who also, inconveniently, make most of the ultra-low-profile sticks I like..

That said, the cheaper the sticks get the less I trust them. Which is a real shitter when the device doesn't accept USB3 devices, even though they're meant to be backwards compatible.

I've never had another brand provide DOA, though.