7 ms·

I've pretty much stopped using 'stick' type storage for anything >256MB, as regardless of brand and series, my experience is that these thingies overheat under

I've pretty much stopped using 'stick' type storage for anything >256MB, as regardless of brand and series, my experience is that these thingies overheat under anything but light write usage, and either slow to a crawl or drop off the USB bus entirely before my copy is finished. 'Credit card' sized SSDs are not that much more inconvenient to carry and store, and don't exhibit any of these issues for me. And the thermals on these things must be horrible, plus the label makes it look like a knock-off: Sandirk?

omnimus 11mo ago
Even smaller and faster are nvme enclosures over thunderbolt. Easily can be boot drive.
- transpute 11mo ago
  Any recommended enclosures that work reliably with Linux?
  - nerdsniper 11mo ago
    These days most of them seem to work just fine on Linux, Windows, and Mac. I use several brands across all 3 and never had an issue. I like the DOCKCASE Visual Smart ($40) or Explorer Edition ($50). They have large capacitors to provide 10 seconds of power loss protection, support 10Gbps USB speeds, and have a second USB port just for power which makes it compatible with SSD's that draw a lot of power. I like the info on the little screens because I swap SSD's in/out frequently. There are cheaper ones that work fine too - the "SABRENT USB 3.2 Type-C Tool-Free Enclosure" ($30) is nice for, well, not needing a screwdriver to swap out the drive - but it might not deliver enough power for some overkill SSD like the (now Sandisk) WD Black SN8100 - but the DockCase will, as long as you also plug in an auxiliary power USB cable. A drive like the Patriot Memory P400 Lite is very low power, so it works with cheaper enclosures or USB ports that don't deliver as much power to the peripheral. It also generates less heat, which can help sustain performance depending on the enclosure and environment.
    - dotancohen 11mo ago
      Which filesystem do you use that handles large disks and can be mounted by Linux, Windows, and Mac?
      - energy123 11mo ago
        I have experience with ext4 not through deliberate choice but through circumstance. ext4 can't be natively mounted in Mac and Windows but you can install third party software and still mount it from the command line easily. And of course ext4 works fine with Linux natively. I don't know if you can install the Mac OS or Windows OS on an ext4 drive and directly boot from it, however.
      - nerdsniper 11mo ago
        Ext4 and NTFS. FUSE for linux and Paragon Software for MacOS. Though often I have three partitions, so I use APFS, NTFS, and Ext4 on the same drive.
        transpute 11mo ago
        A related challenge is encryption of removable flash storage. Linux has FUSE read-only support for decrypting APFS. iOS can read/write encrypted APFS that is formatted on macOS. Would be nice to have encrypted ZFS support on multiple platforms, including iOS and Android.
      - robertlagrant 11mo ago
        ExFAT is becoming a good option on all three. Windows and MacOS have native support, and more and more Linux distros are getting support as well I believe.
      - kanbankaren 11mo ago
        The exFAT suggested below is really not resilient enough that I could trust GBs of data on it. Easily gets corrupted. If you don't need to use it on Mac/Windows, use a FS like BTRFS with checksumming feature. Don't use any FS that doesn't have checksum feature as silent bitrot is real.
  - smallstepforman 11mo ago
    When you say Linux, reliability depends on distro. I had tried to install Mint on an external harddrive, and the stupid installer modified the boot loader to search for Grub on the removable disk. No removable disk, no grub, no booting of any OS. Idiotic. Lets not get started on the repair/recovery process since another mainstream OS recovery tools wont mount Fat32 EFI partition in R/W, needed to verify the uuid for bootmanager.exe - long story short, had to reinstall everything. Note - neither Windows or Linux are on that box anymore, but Haiku and OSX works brilliantly.
    - metalman 11mo ago
      I am begining to dislike mint, that I incidentaly downoaded via mobile data onto an old hinky android phone, then put on a usb drive with a usb/c adapter, with "etchDroid", and booted an ancient desk top with. The phone I have now, has a sim tray with places for 2 SIM's and an SD card, so with one of these 1TB, USB-C drives and a 1 TB SD card, it should be possible to carry a local copy of OSM, and a copy of wikipedia(text only) with plenty of room left, the full wiki is a monsterous 410 TB
      - backscratches 11mo ago
        Every Wikipedia article including pictures is ~111GB. Unless you want all of the edit history then maybe you are right. I have had Wikipedia on my phone for years, local search is fast enough. I also recommend Wiktionary, which has practically every word in every language and is less than 10GB. https://library.kiwix.org/#lang=eng https://library.kiwix.org/#lang=eng
        metalman 11mo ago
        ok!thanks I took the numbers I found at face value. Having local copys of OSM and wiki will be a big asset for work, as mobile data is my only source, and it is not exactly reliable. though I do have enough data on my business plan to indulge in an occasional download frenzy from the awsome site you linked. https://library.kiwix.org/#lang=eng https://library.kiwix.org/#lang=eng
- whatevaa 11mo ago
  No need for thunderbolt, had good experience with good old high speed usb.
  - RamRodification 11mo ago
    I have to admit I still don't really know what thunderbolt even is. I think it's something that is done over USB-C, and requires hardware support on the CPU. I'm guessing it's one search query + a one minute read away though. I just haven't.
    - dontlaugh 11mo ago
      It’s a PCIe tunnelling protocol, sort of. The other simpler one is Oculink. Most of the time you could do the same thing with USB <4 without slowdown.
      - RamRodification 11mo ago
        Good to know! Thanks.
      - deltoidmaximus 11mo ago
        Does Oculink have any special sauce to it? I was under the impression it presented itself as regular old PCI-e and it is really "just" a cabling solution.
        dontlaugh 11mo ago
        I’m not entirely sure. It definitely don’t have its own protocol like Thunderbolt and can’t possibly be secured.
- Maxion 11mo ago
  Mobile storage has gotten so much better in the last few years.
kawsper 11mo ago
The most irritating thing about the credit-card sized ones, are how they aren’t attached if you move around. I like to be mobile, so I put some velcro ultra-mate on the back of my laptop, and also on my disk, then the disk can be attached and plugged in while I move around. I also got a 90-degree USB-C cable for a more direct cable route.
- ssl-3 11mo ago
  Is this what we get when we stop making laptops with upgradeable internal storage?
  - zamadatix 11mo ago
    I still utilize large external drives on my laptop with upgradeable storage, so we get it either way.
  - ZeroConcerns 11mo ago
    I just upgraded the internal storage of my Lenovo T14 (AMD, Gen6) to 4TB, and that took all of 5 minutes. And that laptop was definitely made in 2025, although I agree that consumer sentiment overwhelmingly favors models that are less convenient in that respect.
    - bramhaag 11mo ago
      Meanwhile, modern Apple users: https://youtu.be/RDBX6FTYLoQ https://youtu.be/RDBX6FTYLoQ
      - WesolyKubeczek 11mo ago
        For me it was pure ASMR content
    - kmarc 11mo ago
      Same, with an x1 gen5, upgraded NVME to 1TB This boy is 8 year old today (bought in 2017 November) and still delivers me the €€€ at $consultingjob
Yokolos 11mo ago
I have two SSK USB sticks that give me write speeds of up to 1GB/s (as long as they're not filled to the brim). I've copied things like 80GB games in something like 2-3 minutes. A real SSD will always be best, but I'm pretty happy with these USB sticks.
- jack_tripper 11mo ago
  The USB sticks you talk about are basically USB SSDs, not what we know as traditional thumb drives. I have a similar one too from HP(PNY), and it's crazy fast for its size, but the issue is its controller (ASMedia IIRC) reports it to the OS as a UAS (USB Attached SCSI), similar to an external HDD, instead of Removable Mass Storage as most thumb drives do, so you can't hot -plug/-unplug it, and that controller seems to be backlisted by the Linux kernel for some reason, so it's not recognized on linux unless I fiddle with the "options usb-storage quirks" kernel parameters, but even so my BIOS can't detect it to boot from it. From what I understand the issue causing all this is that it's a native 4K-block device causing issues with booting on it as typically 512-byte block native devices are required for EFI boot, or at least that have 512-byte emulation support which this controller does not. I am so disappointed because I bought a fast USB SSD to install and dual boot Linux on it as a second drive for my Windows laptop. If only I knew that there's such a big difference in the types of USB drives out there and that they're not all remotely the same. So do your due diligence on linux compatibility, if you ever want to buy these USB SSDs.
  - transpute 11mo ago
    This USB SSD boots Debian Linux 6.1 kernel on HP Ryzen laptop, https://www.pny.com/PNY-DUO-Link-V3-USB-3-2-Gen-2-Type-C-OTG?sku=P-FDI1TBDULNK3TYC-GE https://www.pny.com/PNY-DUO-Link-V3-USB-3-2-Gen-2-Type-C-OTG...
    - jack_tripper 11mo ago
      Thanks I already switched to a SATA SSD with USB3.0 adapter that works for booting Linux, I'm just annoyed spending the money on a fast pricy USB drive that doesn't work for anything else than Windows file transfers because of some BS technicality.
nolok 11mo ago
NVMe enclosure are cheap, mine is a ugreen supporting usb 3.2 gen2 and i paid less than 20 euro. Put any kind of half decent nvme in it covered by one of those cheap heat dissipator.
- avipars 11mo ago
  And they are fast
- abdusco 11mo ago
  Any recommendations for >20gbit/s enclosures with passive cooling (that are also not huge)? I have a 10gbit/s enclosure and a 4TB gen4 nvme in it. It pains me to know that it could achieve >3GB/s write speeds but hindered by the interface.
  - AlexandrB 11mo ago
    Highly recommend this site: https://dancharblog.wordpress.com/2024/01/01/list-of-ssd-enclosure-chipsets-2022/ https://dancharblog.wordpress.com/2024/01/01/list-of-ssd-enc... It's key to get an enclosure with a chipset that will support whatever interface your computer actually provides, otherwise a lot of these enclosures will fall back to USB-3 speeds for compatibility and things will be slow. This site gives a pretty good overview of the chipsets out there and pros/cons of each one. I've had good experiences with Acasis[1] enclosures - they seem have a lot of aluminum surface area for dissipating heat - but I get the feeling that a lot of these things are very similar in practice since they're just slapping the same chipsets into different boxes. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Enclosure-Aluminum-External-Support-Compatible/dp/B0BBZT42HC https://www.amazon.com/Enclosure-Aluminum-External-Support-C...
    - mrandish 11mo ago
      +1 for that Acasis. I've had one for 18 months and use it for occasional >1TB backups and big transfers to/from a Dell XPS laptop running Winx64. I benchmarked it with DiskMark64 and speeds are as expected for 40Gbps-class xfer. It was much cheaper to order the laptop with the smallest stock Dell NVME (512GB generic) and immediately upgrade it myself to a 4TB Samsung 990 Pro. The external enclosure made the upgrade much quicker and the savings more than paid for the enclosure plus I got a faster 4TB NVMe than the generic stock Dell NVME 4TB for less money.
sixhobbits 11mo ago
It's a stylized S but it seems to be the official 'SanDisk' - the same image is on https://shop.sandisk.com/products/usb-flash-drives/sandisk-extreme-fit-usb-c?sku=SDCZ530-1T00-G46 https://shop.sandisk.com/products/usb-flash-drives/sandisk-e..., linked in the article
LargoLasskhyfv 11mo ago
I've always wondered about why those little gadgets don't come with metal encasings bonded to the chip with a thermal pad, or putty out of the factory. Be it brushed aluminum, copper, or another alloy. Brushed, anodized, or with fins for 'heavy duty (outdoor/industrial?)' use(which you could clean with a brush, if need be). There should be a market/demand for that, when people are paying fantasy prices for gamified crap, yes?
- izacus 11mo ago
  They do? But that just means that my Transcend USB stick, made from aluminium, just heats up to 60C which makes it very hard to remove after writing without burning your fingers :(
  - LargoLasskhyfv 11mo ago
    Interesting that you mention that brand :-) I had some of them long ago, and they didn't last long. The true metal enclosure was just that, with the 'board' just held in place by the USB-part, and some pins from the other end. No thermal pads, or putty. The other one was just metallic painted plastic. That was the era of 512MB to 4GB. Never bought again from them.
aidenn0 11mo ago
The SanDisk Extreme Pro is the best I've found for USB sticks (not to be confused with the "Extreme Go" which looks very similar and sucks). Just be aware that there are a lot of knockoffs, so be careful of where you source and test the speed of a large file copy (along with checksumming the contents) right after purchasing. The real drives always have a metal enclosure as well, which helps.

omnimus 11mo ago

Even smaller and faster are nvme enclosures over thunderbolt. Easily can be boot drive.

transpute 11mo ago
Any recommended enclosures that work reliably with Linux?
- nerdsniper 11mo ago
  These days most of them seem to work just fine on Linux, Windows, and Mac. I use several brands across all 3 and never had an issue. I like the DOCKCASE Visual Smart ($40) or Explorer Edition ($50). They have large capacitors to provide 10 seconds of power loss protection, support 10Gbps USB speeds, and have a second USB port just for power which makes it compatible with SSD's that draw a lot of power. I like the info on the little screens because I swap SSD's in/out frequently. There are cheaper ones that work fine too - the "SABRENT USB 3.2 Type-C Tool-Free Enclosure" ($30) is nice for, well, not needing a screwdriver to swap out the drive - but it might not deliver enough power for some overkill SSD like the (now Sandisk) WD Black SN8100 - but the DockCase will, as long as you also plug in an auxiliary power USB cable. A drive like the Patriot Memory P400 Lite is very low power, so it works with cheaper enclosures or USB ports that don't deliver as much power to the peripheral. It also generates less heat, which can help sustain performance depending on the enclosure and environment.
  - dotancohen 11mo ago
    Which filesystem do you use that handles large disks and can be mounted by Linux, Windows, and Mac?
    - energy123 11mo ago
      I have experience with ext4 not through deliberate choice but through circumstance. ext4 can't be natively mounted in Mac and Windows but you can install third party software and still mount it from the command line easily. And of course ext4 works fine with Linux natively. I don't know if you can install the Mac OS or Windows OS on an ext4 drive and directly boot from it, however.
    - nerdsniper 11mo ago
      Ext4 and NTFS. FUSE for linux and Paragon Software for MacOS. Though often I have three partitions, so I use APFS, NTFS, and Ext4 on the same drive.
      - transpute 11mo ago
        A related challenge is encryption of removable flash storage. Linux has FUSE read-only support for decrypting APFS. iOS can read/write encrypted APFS that is formatted on macOS. Would be nice to have encrypted ZFS support on multiple platforms, including iOS and Android.
    - robertlagrant 11mo ago
      ExFAT is becoming a good option on all three. Windows and MacOS have native support, and more and more Linux distros are getting support as well I believe.
    - kanbankaren 11mo ago
      The exFAT suggested below is really not resilient enough that I could trust GBs of data on it. Easily gets corrupted. If you don't need to use it on Mac/Windows, use a FS like BTRFS with checksumming feature. Don't use any FS that doesn't have checksum feature as silent bitrot is real.
- smallstepforman 11mo ago
  When you say Linux, reliability depends on distro. I had tried to install Mint on an external harddrive, and the stupid installer modified the boot loader to search for Grub on the removable disk. No removable disk, no grub, no booting of any OS. Idiotic. Lets not get started on the repair/recovery process since another mainstream OS recovery tools wont mount Fat32 EFI partition in R/W, needed to verify the uuid for bootmanager.exe - long story short, had to reinstall everything. Note - neither Windows or Linux are on that box anymore, but Haiku and OSX works brilliantly.
  - metalman 11mo ago
    I am begining to dislike mint, that I incidentaly downoaded via mobile data onto an old hinky android phone, then put on a usb drive with a usb/c adapter, with "etchDroid", and booted an ancient desk top with. The phone I have now, has a sim tray with places for 2 SIM's and an SD card, so with one of these 1TB, USB-C drives and a 1 TB SD card, it should be possible to carry a local copy of OSM, and a copy of wikipedia(text only) with plenty of room left, the full wiki is a monsterous 410 TB
    - backscratches 11mo ago
      Every Wikipedia article including pictures is ~111GB. Unless you want all of the edit history then maybe you are right. I have had Wikipedia on my phone for years, local search is fast enough. I also recommend Wiktionary, which has practically every word in every language and is less than 10GB. https://library.kiwix.org/#lang=eng https://library.kiwix.org/#lang=eng
      - metalman 11mo ago
        ok!thanks I took the numbers I found at face value. Having local copys of OSM and wiki will be a big asset for work, as mobile data is my only source, and it is not exactly reliable. though I do have enough data on my business plan to indulge in an occasional download frenzy from the awsome site you linked. https://library.kiwix.org/#lang=eng https://library.kiwix.org/#lang=eng
whatevaa 11mo ago
No need for thunderbolt, had good experience with good old high speed usb.
- RamRodification 11mo ago
  I have to admit I still don't really know what thunderbolt even is. I think it's something that is done over USB-C, and requires hardware support on the CPU. I'm guessing it's one search query + a one minute read away though. I just haven't.
  - dontlaugh 11mo ago
    It’s a PCIe tunnelling protocol, sort of. The other simpler one is Oculink. Most of the time you could do the same thing with USB <4 without slowdown.
    - RamRodification 11mo ago
      Good to know! Thanks.
    - deltoidmaximus 11mo ago
      Does Oculink have any special sauce to it? I was under the impression it presented itself as regular old PCI-e and it is really "just" a cabling solution.
      - dontlaugh 11mo ago
        I’m not entirely sure. It definitely don’t have its own protocol like Thunderbolt and can’t possibly be secured.
Maxion 11mo ago
Mobile storage has gotten so much better in the last few years.

kawsper 11mo ago

The most irritating thing about the credit-card sized ones, are how they aren’t attached if you move around. I like to be mobile, so I put some velcro ultra-mate on the back of my laptop, and also on my disk, then the disk can be attached and plugged in while I move around. I also got a 90-degree USB-C cable for a more direct cable route.

ssl-3 11mo ago
Is this what we get when we stop making laptops with upgradeable internal storage?
- zamadatix 11mo ago
  I still utilize large external drives on my laptop with upgradeable storage, so we get it either way.
- ZeroConcerns 11mo ago
  I just upgraded the internal storage of my Lenovo T14 (AMD, Gen6) to 4TB, and that took all of 5 minutes. And that laptop was definitely made in 2025, although I agree that consumer sentiment overwhelmingly favors models that are less convenient in that respect.
  - bramhaag 11mo ago
    Meanwhile, modern Apple users: https://youtu.be/RDBX6FTYLoQ https://youtu.be/RDBX6FTYLoQ
    - WesolyKubeczek 11mo ago
      For me it was pure ASMR content
  - kmarc 11mo ago
    Same, with an x1 gen5, upgraded NVME to 1TB This boy is 8 year old today (bought in 2017 November) and still delivers me the €€€ at $consultingjob

Yokolos 11mo ago

I have two SSK USB sticks that give me write speeds of up to 1GB/s (as long as they're not filled to the brim). I've copied things like 80GB games in something like 2-3 minutes. A real SSD will always be best, but I'm pretty happy with these USB sticks.

jack_tripper 11mo ago
The USB sticks you talk about are basically USB SSDs, not what we know as traditional thumb drives. I have a similar one too from HP(PNY), and it's crazy fast for its size, but the issue is its controller (ASMedia IIRC) reports it to the OS as a UAS (USB Attached SCSI), similar to an external HDD, instead of Removable Mass Storage as most thumb drives do, so you can't hot -plug/-unplug it, and that controller seems to be backlisted by the Linux kernel for some reason, so it's not recognized on linux unless I fiddle with the "options usb-storage quirks" kernel parameters, but even so my BIOS can't detect it to boot from it. From what I understand the issue causing all this is that it's a native 4K-block device causing issues with booting on it as typically 512-byte block native devices are required for EFI boot, or at least that have 512-byte emulation support which this controller does not. I am so disappointed because I bought a fast USB SSD to install and dual boot Linux on it as a second drive for my Windows laptop. If only I knew that there's such a big difference in the types of USB drives out there and that they're not all remotely the same. So do your due diligence on linux compatibility, if you ever want to buy these USB SSDs.
- transpute 11mo ago
  This USB SSD boots Debian Linux 6.1 kernel on HP Ryzen laptop, https://www.pny.com/PNY-DUO-Link-V3-USB-3-2-Gen-2-Type-C-OTG?sku=P-FDI1TBDULNK3TYC-GE https://www.pny.com/PNY-DUO-Link-V3-USB-3-2-Gen-2-Type-C-OTG...
  - jack_tripper 11mo ago
    Thanks I already switched to a SATA SSD with USB3.0 adapter that works for booting Linux, I'm just annoyed spending the money on a fast pricy USB drive that doesn't work for anything else than Windows file transfers because of some BS technicality.

nolok 11mo ago

NVMe enclosure are cheap, mine is a ugreen supporting usb 3.2 gen2 and i paid less than 20 euro. Put any kind of half decent nvme in it covered by one of those cheap heat dissipator.

avipars 11mo ago
And they are fast
abdusco 11mo ago
Any recommendations for >20gbit/s enclosures with passive cooling (that are also not huge)? I have a 10gbit/s enclosure and a 4TB gen4 nvme in it. It pains me to know that it could achieve >3GB/s write speeds but hindered by the interface.
- AlexandrB 11mo ago
  Highly recommend this site: https://dancharblog.wordpress.com/2024/01/01/list-of-ssd-enclosure-chipsets-2022/ https://dancharblog.wordpress.com/2024/01/01/list-of-ssd-enc... It's key to get an enclosure with a chipset that will support whatever interface your computer actually provides, otherwise a lot of these enclosures will fall back to USB-3 speeds for compatibility and things will be slow. This site gives a pretty good overview of the chipsets out there and pros/cons of each one. I've had good experiences with Acasis[1] enclosures - they seem have a lot of aluminum surface area for dissipating heat - but I get the feeling that a lot of these things are very similar in practice since they're just slapping the same chipsets into different boxes. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Enclosure-Aluminum-External-Support-Compatible/dp/B0BBZT42HC https://www.amazon.com/Enclosure-Aluminum-External-Support-C...
  - mrandish 11mo ago
    +1 for that Acasis. I've had one for 18 months and use it for occasional >1TB backups and big transfers to/from a Dell XPS laptop running Winx64. I benchmarked it with DiskMark64 and speeds are as expected for 40Gbps-class xfer. It was much cheaper to order the laptop with the smallest stock Dell NVME (512GB generic) and immediately upgrade it myself to a 4TB Samsung 990 Pro. The external enclosure made the upgrade much quicker and the savings more than paid for the enclosure plus I got a faster 4TB NVMe than the generic stock Dell NVME 4TB for less money.

sixhobbits 11mo ago

It's a stylized S but it seems to be the official 'SanDisk' - the same image is on https://shop.sandisk.com/products/usb-flash-drives/sandisk-extreme-fit-usb-c?sku=SDCZ530-1T00-G46 https://shop.sandisk.com/products/usb-flash-drives/sandisk-e..., linked in the article

LargoLasskhyfv 11mo ago

I've always wondered about why those little gadgets don't come with metal encasings bonded to the chip with a thermal pad, or putty out of the factory. Be it brushed aluminum, copper, or another alloy. Brushed, anodized, or with fins for 'heavy duty (outdoor/industrial?)' use(which you could clean with a brush, if need be). There should be a market/demand for that, when people are paying fantasy prices for gamified crap, yes?

izacus 11mo ago
They do? But that just means that my Transcend USB stick, made from aluminium, just heats up to 60C which makes it very hard to remove after writing without burning your fingers :(
- LargoLasskhyfv 11mo ago
  Interesting that you mention that brand :-) I had some of them long ago, and they didn't last long. The true metal enclosure was just that, with the 'board' just held in place by the USB-part, and some pins from the other end. No thermal pads, or putty. The other one was just metallic painted plastic. That was the era of 512MB to 4GB. Never bought again from them.

aidenn0 11mo ago

The SanDisk Extreme Pro is the best I've found for USB sticks (not to be confused with the "Extreme Go" which looks very similar and sucks). Just be aware that there are a lot of knockoffs, so be careful of where you source and test the speed of a large file copy (along with checksumming the contents) right after purchasing. The real drives always have a metal enclosure as well, which helps.