Question Flash drive and corruption ?

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Artisanico

Jan 27, 2025
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I have a 500Gb USB drive which 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.
 
rgd1101 said:
a flash drive or ssd or hdd?

5 or 6 years ago 500GB flash drive? are you sure it is legit 500GB
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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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evermorex76 said:
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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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
 
Artisanico said:
From your links, does this one look OK to buy? https://www.amazon.co.uk/Netac-ZSLIM500G/dp/B088BTGZ43/ref=sr_1_5?ascsubtag=tomshardware-gb-1000006659963228477-20&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.MhzNWBqZ_hUJVs0cboSY2Cf0SsMLPJBgWadzLPN63zWQuc4gjbfhnl3IYtNZMXIPa7VhtEz6P2naAcE2snHShUF4CO5NW_zZXcHsymDq4TDVckMdd4bZ8KWWtRCF0LCgtiXD9ZOnua080d6JciPpKVQIOL1k1QuBbrqM2AoPW8GZzcn2ROe-paYFWaAqG8ZlXhv8P7TNmy8SHSxj1d_f0AP2YW0mWN0F4clMsgamllk.Eqqr_AA_QECHJI6BWRYP-tLmuhQ0UjwL5kBjH0XOZ-w&dib_tag=se&geniuslink=true&keywords=500gb+usb+ssd+stick&qid=1740695287&sr=8-5&th=1
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I wouldn't get that one. They, like many others, repeatedly tout the USB 3.2 Gen 2 10Gbps USB link to the PC, but in only one place do they mention the ACTUAL speed of the drive, 500MBps max (or 550, which they state in a different place), which is only equal to USB 3.2 Gen 1 (USB 3.0 5Gbps). They even mention the drive inside is an NV3000, which is itself rated for 3100/2100 R/W so somehow they've crippled the interface so that it performs like a SATA drive. (Even if they limited it to x1 lane PCIe internally as some enclosures do, that should still be 775MBps.)

I know you're not super worried about speed, but I wouldn't want to get something that has misleading advertising like that as well as crippled hardware, and you want to get value for the money. Netac in general is, from what I've read, not a terrible brand in terms of quality, but it seems you have to choose the right device for that to be true.

This looks good and costs less, and is faster: https://www.amazon.co.uk/SSK-Portable-External-Transmission-Smartphone/dp/B0BZCPDMYG

Or this which potentially is double the speed (if you have USB Gen 2x2) and is even cheaper as it's on sale, and it's a TLC drive. https://www.amazon.co.uk/SSK-Portable-External-Consumption-MacBook/dp/B0CY4PQHXZ

If you want a "stick" SSD where there is no cable to keep track of, you could go with this, although it has the lower SATA-like speeds common in those (still better than regular flash drives). Unfortunately they chose to put a removable cap on one end for some insane reason. https://www.amazon.co.uk/SSK-External-Android-Business-Essential/dp/B0C365PLCC
 
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Artisanico said:
OK so I bought one of these https://www.amazon.co.uk/SSK-Portab...b-9964192885031319415-21&geniuslink=true&th=1 but the options to shrink or make a new partition are greyed out in computer management. Do I need to get yet another drive in order to have another partition?
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Does it say what the filesystem is? Disk Management can only shrink NTFS partitions, but since this is a "compatible with everything" formatted drive I bet it's exFAT. You may want to try something like AOMEI Partition Assistant. It's faster and has more capabilities than Disk Management (even the free version) and can probably resize exFAT. If you just want to use Disk Management and want to use exFAT for compatibility you'd have to delete and create new partitions of the size you want, but if you're only using it with Windows machines then you could also just reformat it as NTFS. (Nearly everything can read NTFS, they just can't write to it.) I'd also make sure it's GPT and not MBR, although it should never really matter.
 
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evermorex76 said:
Does it say what the filesystem is? Disk Management can only shrink NTFS partitions, but since this is a "compatible with everything" formatted drive I bet it's exFAT. You may want to try something like AOMEI Partition Assistant. It's faster and has more capabilities than Disk Management (even the free version) and can probably resize exFAT. If you just want to use Disk Management and want to use exFAT for compatibility you'd have to delete and create new partitions of the size you want, but if you're only using it with Windows machines then you could also just reformat it as NTFS. (Nearly everything can read NTFS, they just can't write to it.) I'd also make sure it's GPT and not MBR, although it should never really matter.
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That'll be what it is then. Can I take it that the sole benefit of exFAT over NTFS is that some OSs can't write to it? I have already got AOMEI Partition Assistant but it doesn't give the option of changing partition size. (Well maybe if I get the Pro version it might.)
 
Artisanico said:
That'll be what it is then. Can I take it that the sole benefit of exFAT over NTFS is that some OSs can't write to it? I have already got AOMEI Partition Assistant but it doesn't give the option of changing partition size. (Well maybe if I get the Pro version it might.)
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Weird. I tested with a small partition and AOMEI PA lets me move it around, but not resize it. Anyway yeah, the interoperability is the only benefit of exFAT over NTFS, as it doesn't require licensing fees for an "approved" commercial product that can write to it. There are paid products to add write functions for NTFS to other OSes, as well as some free ones that have a lot of quirks and features missing. Otherwise exFAT has a lot of the same downsides as FAT32, though it is better than FAT32, but some products still don't support exFAT. NTFS is still a better, more reliable file system for active usage than exFAT, which was optimized to be a better option for flash drives than FAT32, mainly because of the file size and partition size limit, where you'd probably just be making one partition and just be occasionally transferring files with it (hence not being resizable, but I don't know what they did to make it SO HARD that nobody's products will resize).
 
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evermorex76 said:
Weird. I tested with a small partition and AOMEI PA lets me move it around, but not resize it. Anyway yeah, the interoperability is the only benefit of exFAT over NTFS, as it doesn't require licensing fees for an "approved" commercial product that can write to it. There are paid products to add write functions for NTFS to other OSes, as well as some free ones that have a lot of quirks and features missing. Otherwise exFAT has a lot of the same downsides as FAT32, though it is better than FAT32, but some products still don't support exFAT. NTFS is still a better, more reliable file system for active usage than exFAT, which was optimized to be a better option for flash drives than FAT32, mainly because of the file size and partition size limit, where you'd probably just be making one partition and just be occasionally transferring files with it (hence not being resizable, but I don't know what they did to make it SO HARD that nobody's products will resize).
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So if I did a complete reformat (presumably, not quick format?) over all my data and used NTFS, I wouldn't be compromising on susceptibility to corruption?
 
Artisanico said:
So if I did a complete reformat (presumably, not quick format?) over all my data and used NTFS, I wouldn't be compromising on susceptibility to corruption?
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You shouldn't do a full format on SSDs generally. It isn't necessary and it can cause excessive wear, as well as not always overwriting the full set of blocks, due to the difference in design between SSDs and mechanical drives. Just delete the partition and create a new one, or you can do a quick format. (If the drive type shows it is using MBR, I would suggest deleting the partition and re-initializing the drive as GPT, then creating the new NTFS partition. AOMEI will show the type clearly. Disk Management only shows the option to convert to the other in the context menu and will only do it on an empty drive anyway.)

NTFS is much more reliable than exFAT or FAT32 when it comes to corruption and other issues because it's a journaling file system (basically Microsoft's answer to the MacOS and UNIX and OS/2 file systems when it was created, because they were so much better than FAT but MS had to be special and unique and proprietary). It keeps a journal of data being written to the disk, and it only marks a job as complete in the journal after it has finished writing the data. So if the drive loses power or something during a write task, the journal will not show that the last write was completed and the OS will know there is some data loss. The FAT formats don't have anything like that, and just assume that once something is sent to the drive to be written, it's done; you only find out there was loss when you try to find that file. NTFS also has a lot of other features that don't exist in the FAT formats. It's less prone to fragmentation, which still matters on mechanical drives and who knows whether future drive tech will have to worry about that again.
 
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