7 ms·

SanDisk isn’t premium at all. And known for various issues.

by glintik 4y ago

brookst 4y ago
The used to be premium? Or at least I considered them to be. TIL. Who is a good premium brand today?
- Our_Benefactors 4y ago
  Samsung has lines that are marketed for use in security cams, these have a high read/write cycle lifetime. They’re worth it for embedded devices like raspberry pi.
  - antongribok 4y ago
    I switched to Samsung from SanDisk about 7-8 years ago (when I first discovered this cheating on one of my SanDisk USB sticks) and haven't had any issues. BTW, there is no need to buy anything fancy for RPi, I just buy the cheap stuff, but I buy much higher capacity than what I need. Overprovisioning this way is cheaper and more reliable in my opinion vs. buying something more exotic. For example for the most basic RPi install, I'll buy a 64GB microSD card. The card may only ever see less than 10 GB worth of data, but I know it'll last for years with plenty of chatty logs written to it daily. Source: I've been running RPis from the very first version, and have never had a single card fail on me, ever.
    - blagie 4y ago
      About two decades ago, there was a nice article about a hierarchy of memory cards. The chips are binned: - Reliable chips were placed in name-brand products - Defective chips have the defective parts disabled, and were placed in products on tier down. A 16MB chip might be sold as an 8MB. - Unreliable chips were given various error correcting techniques, and are placed in cheap, off-brand parts, as well as non-critical applications (such as, at the time, answering machines). A common technique was to scatter addresses, so errors were randomly distributed. For answering machines, this meant a little bit of static. For other applications, this meant a bit of ECC would make them quasi-reliable. Cards and chips down the line failed a lot more than at the top. I have had a few memory cards fail before. I am glad to pay for top-line parts. The premium I'm willing to pay is in the low tens of dollars, which is what Sandisk used to do.
    - magicalhippo 4y ago
      > there is no need to buy anything fancy for RPi I found non-A1/A2 cards to be significantly slower, so these days I ensure they're at least A1 rated.
  - m463 4y ago
    yeah, but monitor the 980/970 evo plus issues: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34648149 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34648149
- MichaelZuo 4y ago
  Lacie still has real customer support for their professional products. Then again their cheapest pro product is several hundred dollars.
- glintik 4y ago
  Kingston, Transcend - they have premium lines, pretty good IMHO.
- fencepost 4y ago
  I've used Kanguru in the past but haven't really looked at USB drives since switching to IODD external SSDs. You might also look specifically for "Windows To Go Certified" flash drives - not because you're actually going to run Windows from them but because they should meet some decent minimums for speed and flash endurance.
acdha 4y ago
They used to be. Then Western Digital bought them, and this is how they advertised hard drives for years.
- KennyBlanken 4y ago
  Their consumer-level portable flash drive stuff has been trash for a decade or two...overpriced, slow, high failure rate, and terrible/gimmicky cases. It's only their high-end stuff that was decent. For a long time, they were kings of the high-end CompactFlash and SD card market for photo/video work with their Extreme and Ultra lines. Lexar was the other major player there. A lot of other companies offered cheaper, better performing products particularly for USB flash drives.
comboy 4y ago
Then which brand is? And I'm mostly looking for reliable rather than premium.
- ac29 4y ago
  Swissbit makes SLC and pSLC USB flash drives that should be significantly more reliable than typical consumer drives. They also cost 10x more. https://www.swissbit.com/en/products/nand-flash-products/usb-products/ https://www.swissbit.com/en/products/nand-flash-products/usb...
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    I don't need that many write cycles, though. I need a good controller, which can give me both high speed and high reliability with more bits per cell. So "should be" is not very enticing, especially if they want to charge 10x. As far as I can tell you can get generic flash chips and run them as SLC, so they should only need 3x the flash and 1x as much everything else. And actually looking at the prices here, it's about $120 for 32 gigacells. If you get the SLC model then you're not paying 10x the cost per byte, you're paying 40x the cost per byte.
    - dmitrygr 4y ago
      > so they should only need 3x the flash No, (2^3)x, as in 8x
      - Dylan16807 4y ago
        You're mixing things up. TLC flash puts 3 bits into each cell. It's 3x as dense. The fact that it uses 8 voltage levels is only relevant to performance and durability. (Also 2^1 versus 2^3 is not 8x anyway.)

SanDisk isn’t premium at all. And known for various issues.

brookst 4y ago

The used to be premium? Or at least I considered them to be. TIL. Who is a good premium brand today?

Our_Benefactors 4y ago
Samsung has lines that are marketed for use in security cams, these have a high read/write cycle lifetime. They’re worth it for embedded devices like raspberry pi.
- antongribok 4y ago
  I switched to Samsung from SanDisk about 7-8 years ago (when I first discovered this cheating on one of my SanDisk USB sticks) and haven't had any issues. BTW, there is no need to buy anything fancy for RPi, I just buy the cheap stuff, but I buy much higher capacity than what I need. Overprovisioning this way is cheaper and more reliable in my opinion vs. buying something more exotic. For example for the most basic RPi install, I'll buy a 64GB microSD card. The card may only ever see less than 10 GB worth of data, but I know it'll last for years with plenty of chatty logs written to it daily. Source: I've been running RPis from the very first version, and have never had a single card fail on me, ever.
  - blagie 4y ago
    About two decades ago, there was a nice article about a hierarchy of memory cards. The chips are binned: - Reliable chips were placed in name-brand products - Defective chips have the defective parts disabled, and were placed in products on tier down. A 16MB chip might be sold as an 8MB. - Unreliable chips were given various error correcting techniques, and are placed in cheap, off-brand parts, as well as non-critical applications (such as, at the time, answering machines). A common technique was to scatter addresses, so errors were randomly distributed. For answering machines, this meant a little bit of static. For other applications, this meant a bit of ECC would make them quasi-reliable. Cards and chips down the line failed a lot more than at the top. I have had a few memory cards fail before. I am glad to pay for top-line parts. The premium I'm willing to pay is in the low tens of dollars, which is what Sandisk used to do.
  - magicalhippo 4y ago
    > there is no need to buy anything fancy for RPi I found non-A1/A2 cards to be significantly slower, so these days I ensure they're at least A1 rated.
- m463 4y ago
  yeah, but monitor the 980/970 evo plus issues: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34648149 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34648149
MichaelZuo 4y ago
Lacie still has real customer support for their professional products. Then again their cheapest pro product is several hundred dollars.
glintik 4y ago
Kingston, Transcend - they have premium lines, pretty good IMHO.
fencepost 4y ago
I've used Kanguru in the past but haven't really looked at USB drives since switching to IODD external SSDs. You might also look specifically for "Windows To Go Certified" flash drives - not because you're actually going to run Windows from them but because they should meet some decent minimums for speed and flash endurance.

acdha 4y ago

They used to be. Then Western Digital bought them, and this is how they advertised hard drives for years.

KennyBlanken 4y ago
Their consumer-level portable flash drive stuff has been trash for a decade or two...overpriced, slow, high failure rate, and terrible/gimmicky cases. It's only their high-end stuff that was decent. For a long time, they were kings of the high-end CompactFlash and SD card market for photo/video work with their Extreme and Ultra lines. Lexar was the other major player there. A lot of other companies offered cheaper, better performing products particularly for USB flash drives.

comboy 4y ago

Then which brand is? And I'm mostly looking for reliable rather than premium.

ac29 4y ago
Swissbit makes SLC and pSLC USB flash drives that should be significantly more reliable than typical consumer drives. They also cost 10x more. https://www.swissbit.com/en/products/nand-flash-products/usb-products/ https://www.swissbit.com/en/products/nand-flash-products/usb...
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  I don't need that many write cycles, though. I need a good controller, which can give me both high speed and high reliability with more bits per cell. So "should be" is not very enticing, especially if they want to charge 10x. As far as I can tell you can get generic flash chips and run them as SLC, so they should only need 3x the flash and 1x as much everything else. And actually looking at the prices here, it's about $120 for 32 gigacells. If you get the SLC model then you're not paying 10x the cost per byte, you're paying 40x the cost per byte.
  - dmitrygr 4y ago
    > so they should only need 3x the flash No, (2^3)x, as in 8x
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      You're mixing things up. TLC flash puts 3 bits into each cell. It's 3x as dense. The fact that it uses 8 voltage levels is only relevant to performance and durability. (Also 2^1 versus 2^3 is not 8x anyway.)