Question Flash drive and corruption

Jan 27, 2025
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I have a 500Gb USB drive with is perhaps 6 or 7 years old but I hardly use it -- I use it only as a secondary data store and have written to it only a few times. I have made a new partition on it and given it a full format but the same thing happened as has plagued my use of this drive: many of the files and folders are corrupted as soon as they hit the drive, so don't get copied. What does this mean? What can I do? TIA.
 
a flash drive or ssd or hdd?

5 or 6 years ago 500GB flash drive? are you sure it is legit 500GB
I don't know the difference between a flash drive and an SSD, but it is a memory stick type of thing. Perhaps I was exaggerating its age; I might have bought it in 2022 as I had a lot of data loss back then.
 
You've been using it for 3 years and it has been faulty the entire time and yet you keep trying to use it? It's trash at this point since it probably wouldn't be eligible for RMA anymore (no idea what it cost originally).

What is the model exactly? Even 3 years ago a 500GB flash drive would not have been very common or cheap. But you CAN get cheap, high performance flash drives and even better USB SSD sticks now.

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=500gb+usb+ssd+stick
 
Oh wow. So yeah, randomly-named Chinese brand flash drive of massive size from 2.5years ago. It's amazing you could even format it. Smash it and replace it with something from a reputable brand. Real SSD sticks aren't even that much more expensive than flash drives but perform like an external USB drive. (But flash drives can be much smaller physically.)
 
OK so if anyone can advise me in specific terms as to a good one to buy (thing is, I want my secondary data store to be on some media other than an HDD, as I have my primary one as an HDD) then I'll go ahead and buy it. It doesn't need to be 500GB -- 250 or 300 Gb will do me. TIA
 
Why would you be using a slow HDD as your primary storage, and want to make a really fast SSD the secondary one? (Most of the flash drives will not be that fast at writing, but there are a few that would rival an HDD.)

Any of the known brand names in the links I gave will be good for you. PNY, SanDisk, Samsung, even SSK, Amazon Basics, Teamgroup, Buffalo, Silicon Power, all good brands so just look at the prices and sizes.
 
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Why would you be using a slow HDD as your primary storage, and want to make a really fast SSD the secondary one? (Most of the flash drives will not be that fast at writing, but there are a few that would rival an HDD.)

Any of the known brand names in the links I gave will be good for you. PNY, SanDisk, Samsung, even SSK, Amazon Basics, Teamgroup, Buffalo, Silicon Power, all good brands so just look at the prices and sizes.
From your links, does this one look OK to buy? https://www.amazon.co.uk/Netac-ZSLI...00gb+usb+ssd+stick&qid=1740695287&sr=8-5&th=1