Bridges Loc: Memphis, Charleston SC, now Nazareth PA

Did anyone else see the ad and purchase the 2 TB thumb drive that was advertised recently? I bought these -- these were advertised buy one, get one free. I couldn't believe a 2 TB thumb drive! So they came in the mail yesterday -- two of them for 39.95. I plugged one in to see if it even booted up, and to my surprise it did. Now with almost 4 TB of storage space I can back up virtually all my photos on a drive that doesn't have a spinning disc and won't be apt to crash. If they are still available I may order two more!

pmorin Loc: Huntington Beach, Palm Springs

I had looked into that option at one time and decided to do some checking. You may want to take a look at this video.
https://youtu.be/Kix3JKn08OU

tramsey Loc: Texas

I've heard of 1 TB on a flash drive but not two. They were on Amazon, none of them had very good reviews. The biggest problem was booting up.

Good luck with them.

Bridges Loc: Memphis, Charleston SC, now Nazareth PA

Not good news, but it wasn't like getting ripped off for a few hundred dollars. I'll see how this one works and report back on it. Most likely a 16gb unit like he said.

pmorin Loc: Huntington Beach, Palm Springs

It could actually be a bit larger, but I would guess that’s correct.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

I saw one of those advertised a couple months ago and decided it was too good to be true. I declined. It was like $10.

Saw a recent post about it in another thread. Checked a bit online and found several people who got one just to show that it didn't work. With example videos. Their results varied from 2GBytes to 15 GBytes. Prices from $7 to $25.

Google it.

Bridges Loc: Memphis, Charleston SC, now Nazareth PA

I'm going to see how much I can load on it and let you know.

Bridges Loc: Memphis, Charleston SC, now Nazareth PA

Ok, testing done, I'm out of here with these things. Earlier I had tried to download 811gb. to see if it would hold it. The needle was hardly moving and said it was downloading 5.26 mb per sec. At that rate it would have taken 9+ days to move the materials! I usually back up a full TB hard drive in less than 24 hours. I cancelled that download and wanted to see what it would do with a single file in which I had around 54 gb. of photos. I would have expected around 30 min. but it said it would take over 4 hours! I don't care how much capacity these sticks have, they are s_l_o_w! I hope I paid by Pay Pal because I'm going to try to get a refund on these.

jbk224 Loc: Long Island, NY

I hope you do..but...they may in fact hold what they were advertised to hold. I heard nothing about speed. The old adage remains....'You get what you pay for'.

larryepage Loc: North Texas area

I was working today to decommission a couple of old (~2006) laptops which still work but have just passed beyond their useful life. One of them turned out to still have a few files that retained some interest, so I decided to copy them to a thumb drive. Haven't done that in several years, since all of our computers have built-in SD card readers which are much faster, more convenient, and more secure to use.

While waiting for files to copy to the drive with the laptop on my lap (it's an extra one, with no place to live), the computer slipped a little bit, and my leg ended up pushing very slightly upwards against the drive as it was plugged in to the slot. I doubt that the drive deflected more than 3-5 degrees, but it was enough to damage the internal connections between the physical connector and the body & internals of the drive. Killed the drive right there...no recovery, no reformat, nothing. Fortunately, I was able to find another 16GB drive and recopy the files. (16GB is the biggest drive that is compatible with that old computer and operating system.)

The point of this story is not to generate a bunch of reprimands telling me that I shouldn't have been so careless while copying those files. I knew (and still know) that already. I've already taken care of the personal correction. Twice. The point is that I knew better, have better habits, and did it anyway, thinking I could get by with it "just this once."

Thumb drives have notoriously weak physical and internal construction. They are also notoriously slow (even the later generation ones). And they are just waiting to get lost in a drawer or under a desk or in a pants pocket. And the lowest cost ones are the worst transgressors.

2 TB is a huge amount of data and represents a similarly huge number of photographs, even for cameras like the D850.

Please reconsider this mechanism for saving your images.

Peterfiore Loc: Where DR goes south

2TB flash and up are common, the original post was talking about thumb drives.

editorsteve

The controller chip on a thumb drive or memory card can be faked to tell the computer it has any amount of capacity. It may report 2TB but have just a few MB.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Good luck with getting your money back. I'd chalk it up to a lesson from the School of Hard Knocks and moving on. You should be happy you didn't buy a dozen of them.

domcomm Loc: Denver, CO

I got 2 of them for $7 (BOGO) and they have worked fine so far.

editorsteve

Try to write a bunch of files, maybe 16 GB, and see if you can read them back .