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SanDisk launches dongle-like Extreme Fit USB-C flash drive with up to 1 TB

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Re: SanDisk launches dongle-like Extreme Fit USB-C flash drive with up to 1 TB

#121

Post by Modified3019 »

varispeed wrote: post #83
nolok wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How do you deal with chronic removal of drive before unmounting? Are there any enclosures that hold charge to prevent data corruption in an event of sudden removal?

Dockcase makes enclosures with a capacitor that hold ~5 or 10 seconds of charge, and on power loss sends whatever the “get ready for shut down NOW” signal is to the contained drives. This obviously doesn’t help with unsynced data that the OS had not sent to the drive yet. I use one for a ventoy install, an another for a windows to go install. Windows on a usb stick is finicky to get recognized as bootable sometimes (likely a combination of hardware and software), but otherwise works well when it’s up.

https://www.dockcase.com/collections/ssd-enclosure

One thing to keep in mind is USB 3 ports often only output around 4.5 Watts, whereas some nvme m.2 drives want more than double that when writing. So it’s a good idea to choose a drive with lower active power requirements. The longer enclosures for dockcase have an extra usb-c port that more power can be supplied with

Re: SanDisk launches dongle-like Extreme Fit USB-C flash drive with up to 1 TB

#122

Post by nextaccountic »

blfr wrote: post #44
kawsper wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What do you do with all that storage? Here's the root partition (well, lvm) on a laptop I have been using for over three years now » df -hT ~ Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/mapper/vgubuntu-root ext4 869G 298G 527G 37% / I do have an external drive for backups and another for drone footage but this is it. Everything else is either fast enough in the cloud or just here.

Rust compilation artifacts.

Re: SanDisk launches dongle-like Extreme Fit USB-C flash drive with up to 1 TB

#123

Post by jack_tripper »

Yokolos wrote: post #84
jack_tripper wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

I'm not sure what you mean by "so you can't hot -plug/-unplug it". If I use it in Windows or Linux, I can eject it like I can any standard non-SSD USB stick. I'm also not sure what issues you've been having with booting from them. I've occasionally used these things to boot Linux LiveCDs without issue. Might be a compatibility issue with your BIOS specifically? I've seen some messed up BIOS's that simply defy all exp…

>I'm not sure what you mean by "so you can't hot -plug/-unplug it"

Only UMS (universal mass storage) devices can be hot-plugged-unplugged without ejecting, while UAS (USB Attached SCSI) devices cannot and need to be ejected beforehand since the OS treats them like an internal drive instead of a removable one.

> I'm also not sure what issues you've been having with booting from them. Might be a compatibility issue with your BIOS specifically?

NO, like I explained before, it's not the BIOS, it's the lack of 512 block support on the USB SSD controller which is very uncommon on traditional USB thumb drives but is needed for UEFI/BIOS boot. USB tools (like Rufus in default mode) create 512B-aligned images, but if the drive is 4Kn-only, GRUB or kernel can't read the filesystem.

The lack of 512 support seems to be a issue on the newer lower-cost USB SSDs which are designed to just do NTFS file transfers on the go and not host an OS for boot.

>I've occasionally used these things to boot Linux LiveCDs without issue.

Because yours have 512 native support like most USB drives. But No 512 support, no OS boot. Simple.

Re: SanDisk launches dongle-like Extreme Fit USB-C flash drive with up to 1 TB

#124

Post by backscratches »

metalman wrote: post #58
smallstepforman wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 wikipedi…

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

Re: SanDisk launches dongle-like Extreme Fit USB-C flash drive with up to 1 TB

#126

Post by wkat4242 »

craftkiller wrote: post #90

Someone please copy the yubikey 5c form factor but make it a flash drive. I've been looking for years for a small, durable, usb type-c flashdrive for my keychain but nothing comes close to the yubikey 5c. The 5c has the metal ring so it won't ever rip off my keychain, the hole is large enough to fit a solid metal ring through it, and it is small enough that I can keep it on my keychain and use it without stressing my…

Having a stick with exposed contacts and no USB shell (like the yubikey has) is not possible in USB3 format. It requires springs on the stick itself, no chance of the easy, pretty much unbreakable yubikey format. That only works for USB2. USB3-A (and -C) reversed the part that is springy, what was previously in the receptacle is now in the plug. Of course USB3-A is a mixed standard so the USB2 part is still as it was for backwards compatibility.

The reason is that the springs wear the most. This ensures longevity of USB ports in laptops where they are hard to replace. A USB cable or device is usually much easier to replace, and also a PC is normally used with many devices so the wear is shared between them now. But it does mean the contacts on the plug side are more fragile now.

And without USB3, filling something at current capacity levels is going to be tedious.

Of course for a yubikey that just transfers a few bytes this is not an issue but for a USB key it is.

Re: SanDisk launches dongle-like Extreme Fit USB-C flash drive with up to 1 TB

#128

Post by dataflow »

Modified3019 wrote: post #121
varispeed wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you deal with chronic removal of drive before unmounting? Are there any enclosures that hold charge to prevent data corruption in an event of sudden removal?

Dockcase makes enclosures with a capacitor that hold ~5 or 10 seconds of charge, and on power loss sends whatever the “get ready for shut down NOW” signal is to the contained drives. This obviously doesn’t help with unsynced data that the OS had not sent to the drive yet. I use one for a ventoy install, an another for a windows to go install. Windows on a usb stick is finicky to get recognized as bootable sometimes (…

These look cool but support only up to 4TB capacity? That feels like a super silly limitation. Do they plan to release anything with higher capacity support? Or maybe these would unofficially work fine with 8TB etc.?

Re: SanDisk launches dongle-like Extreme Fit USB-C flash drive with up to 1 TB

#129

Post by davidkwast »

dotancohen wrote: post #33
nerdsniper wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 inf…

Which filesystem do you use that handles large disks and can be mounted by Linux, Windows, and Mac?

NTFS

Re: SanDisk launches dongle-like Extreme Fit USB-C flash drive with up to 1 TB

#130

Post by BenjiWiebe »

system2 wrote: post #38

When I was studying at university, I had the highest-capacity USB drive of its time, which was 64mb. I was able to fit all my Word documents and some extras, and still felt huge. I can't find a reason for anyone to use a tiny flash drive and store 1tb info on it. It is too risky to store anything important without a backup. Versioning is also an issue and must be synced somewhere all the time. I thought we were over…

Using ventoy and having multiple rescue/install images on one flash drive is super nice. I have a Windows 2 go installation on it too.
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