High capacity USB flash drives?

[DWalt]

I have a need to store many years of digitized information off several old hard drives for archival purposes, estimating I need somewhere close to 1TB. Would need to make several identical copies for data storage in different off premises locations, and would like to use single large USB flash drives (partitioned) to save space.

I have seen USB flash drives that are advertised to contain 1TB and 2TB selling at prices around $10 each. That would be my preference, but I have not used USB drives larger than 128GB previously. Does anyone have experience with the reliability of such large USB drives?

 

[El Juero]

Why not use a standard portable hard drive? I am leery of thumb drives. While they will probably not go out of use for awhile, they are already converting to USB-c away from USB-a style plugins. Even better why not simply consider cloud storage?

 

[Faulkner]

Why not use a standard portable hard drive? I am leery of thumb drives. While they will probably not go out of use for awhile, they are already converting to USB-c away from USB-a style plugins. Even better why not simply consider cloud storage?

I agree ^^^^^. We back up some of our investigative info on USB portable hard drives for long term storage. They are not all that expensive.

 

[Kanewpadle]

I had a flash drive go bad with hundreds of pictures on it. Thankfully I had it backed up to a 2TB portable drive.

 

[pasound]

I have several 64Gb and 128Gb flash drives. I've had several smaller ones at work fail after too many read-write cycles. For long term portable storage, I prefer small portable solid-state drives. The Crucial X10 Pro is a good 2Tb, and hardly bigger than two flash drives. The 2 Tb Samsung T7 Shield is also good, with an armored case. It's closer to a small regular backup drive, like a WD.

 

[wood714]

I've got 3 hard drives in enclosures that you have to plug into a wall outlet for power, and 6 portable drives that just use USB. Couldn't count the flash drives I have.

I'll only by Western Digital hard drives, and SanDisk flash drives.

Just saw a WD 16TB external drive on Amazon for $254. I'm kinda leery about putting that much stuff on one drive thou.

All my gazillion pictures are backed up to my website.

 

[Ματθιας]

I have a number of 256 and 512GB Sandisk flash drives. No problems.

 

[Muss Muggins]

Buy a 2 TB external hard drive. Less than $100

 

[CGhelofxr]

I've had data lost forever on flash drives. Better bet is a portable hard drive.

 

[gjgalligan]

Anything produced by man can fail.
Making several copies on various platforms is the only insurance.
I have never used the "cloud" as I don't trust things I have no control over nor do I trust that it can not be hacked.

 

[IAM Rand]

If you are going to buy an external hard drive you want a SSD, solid state drive. No moving discs. You might want to look at cloud storage. You can access it from anywhere and it is fairly secure and inexpensive.

 

[SweetMK]

My SIL is a computer GURU,,
He is well versed in this.
He says ANY storage that you can have in your home needs to be connected and used periodically.
Otherwise, the device will simply loose data.

Unless you are willing to keep the storage energized,, use cloud storage.

 

[WR Moore]

I picked up a Seagate expansion hard drive whose capacity is in Terra/Tetra bytes complete with hard case for not much. More than a thumb drive, but much more capacity.

 

[rwsmith]

I didn't know until reading this.....

That Sandisk is owned by Western Digital.

 

[desmobob]

I use a pair of Samsung solid state drives and keep one at home and one off site.

 

[Kinman]

The computer geek we used to have was a family friend that used to build his own computers back in the day, started his own computer security business and other side lines. He used to come over to the house at least once a year and give us an upgrade. He would simply plug that usb gizmo he kept on his key ring into our computers and in a "flash" have us all up to date. He usually sat down and cleaned up a few issues but generally that thumb drive did everything. We also had him available on line, he could access our machines and square away anything out of the ordinary from his home or office. He has moved away and we are currently in limbo although have located an office nearby that specializes in that sort of thing. I will not be so ready to give them free access to my computer as I did our old friend. Many years ago we had a guy would come by and fix stuff, he was a tweaker...no teeth, but man could that guy fix a problem on your computer. I walked him out to his car and believe it or not this guy had the entire passenger compartment of his car filled....filled with empty Pepsi cans, right up to seat level and nearly spilling over the tranny hump. Never saw him without a can of Pepsi in his hand, you'd a thought he had one grafted there.

 

[Muss Muggins]

Good luck with that . . .

The computer geek we used to have was a family friend that used to build his own computers back in the day, started his own computer security business and other side lines. He used to come over to the house at least once a year and give us an upgrade. He would simply plug that usb gizmo he kept on his key ring into our computers and in a "flash" have us all up to date. He usually sat down and cleaned up a few issues but generally that thumb drive did everything. We also had him available on line, he could access our machines and square away anything out of the ordinary from his home or office. He has moved away and we are currently in limbo although have located an office nearby that specializes in that sort of thing. I will not be so ready to give them free access to my computer as I did our old friend. Many years ago we had a guy would come by and fix stuff, he was a tweaker...no teeth, but man could that guy fix a problem on your computer. I walked him out to his car and believe it or not this guy had the entire passenger compartment of his car filled....filled with empty Pepsi cans, right up to seat level and nearly spilling over the tranny hump. Never saw him without a can of Pepsi in his hand, you'd a thought he had one grafted there.

 

[BKLooney]

I've got 3 incremental backups of this PC going all the time. On the Mac I've got a 24 TB Raid 5 running as well as single drive backups of that data in one of the safes in the detached garage...

I try my best not to lose any data which can leave in far less than a blink of the eye..

 

[pasound]

Years ago, I was that computer geek. Not anymore. I have 5 years of WD Backup on an outboard drive. Never used the "cloud". I don't trust it for security.

 

[wundudnee]

The "cloud" is just someone else's computer or hardware. Ask previous Fototime users.