As someone who used to work in data recovery, and has had to repair countless USB sticks over the years... this isn't a new trend. There has always been shady, bootleg, low quality, cheap USB...
As someone who used to work in data recovery, and has had to repair countless USB sticks over the years... this isn't a new trend. There has always been shady, bootleg, low quality, cheap USB sticks with reject batch NAND chips, and SD/microSD cards in them. And don't even get me started on all the various tricks a lot of the shittiest ones use to make the drives appear larger than they actually are. Those were the real nightmare ones to fix and recover data from.
p.s. If you really need a reliable USB stick, your best bet is to actually make your own using an NVMe M.2 drive and putting that in an NVMe M.2 USB enclosure, like one from SilverStone, UGREEN, or Sabrent. Since at least then you know exactly what you're getting inside it, and those enclosures are a lot more robust.
You also get declared speeds out of your DIY USB "flash". I always find it difficult to find some reliable source for (especially write) speeds for all the flash sticks on the market. When USB3...
You also get declared speeds out of your DIY USB "flash". I always find it difficult to find some reliable source for (especially write) speeds for all the flash sticks on the market. When USB3 became more used flash sticks with USB3 showed up but they could still have terrible 1MB/s write...
That too yeah. My DIY SilverStone USB sticks with Samsung 970 EVOs in them can reach pretty damn near full USB 3.1 Gen 2 speeds (10Gb/s). Whereas none of the off-the-shelf, consumer-grade "USB...
That too yeah. My DIY SilverStone USB sticks with Samsung 970 EVOs in them can reach pretty damn near full USB 3.1 Gen 2 speeds (10Gb/s). Whereas none of the off-the-shelf, consumer-grade "USB 3.1" USB sticks I've encountered, even Samsung ones, have come anywhere close to that.
Yeah, it's basically the same process for assembling pretty much all of them. However that video is really old, so Linus' setup is definitely not optimal at all. The enclosure he used (a...
Yeah, it's basically the same process for assembling pretty much all of them. However that video is really old, so Linus' setup is definitely not optimal at all. The enclosure he used (a SilverStone MS09) wasn't compatible with NVMe M.2, which is why he had to use a slower AHCI/SATA M.2 drive, and why he complained that it wouldn't be able to utilize the full 10Gb/s of the enclosure's USB 3.1 Gen 2 interface.
But nowadays you can buy NVMe M.2 compatible enclosures that actually can get the full 10Gb/s out of USB 3.1 gen 2 and above. So if you want a more optimal setup that can reach that full speed, instead of doing exactly what he did, just buy an NVMe M.2 drive, and make sure the enclosure you buy supports NVMe M.2 too.
AFAIK the only enclosures that don't support NVMe M.2, of the ones that I linked to, are those much older MS09 and MS10 models from SilverStone. Everything else, including the SilverStone MS11, should be NVMe M.2 compatible. Just CTRL-F "NVMe" on the enclosure's product page to be sure, although most have NVMe right in their product title or description, so it's usually not super hard to tell. You shouldn't have to go digging through their spec sheets or anything. ;)
I feel like for most use cases you just don’t need a reliable USB stick. Personally the only use I’ve had for them for a while is loading files on to machines like a 3D printer or playing a video...
I feel like for most use cases you just don’t need a reliable USB stick. Personally the only use I’ve had for them for a while is loading files on to machines like a 3D printer or playing a video on a TV where it doesn’t matter if they break. Even if you had a super reliable one, you can still physically lose it.
The only case I can imagine where it matters is something like live recording video to a portable SSD where you really don’t want it to fail before you get home and back it up.
Eh. Disagree. They're still incredibly handy to have in plenty of cases, especially for IT work. But based on my experience, the biggest users of USB sticks, who really shouldn't be using them, or...
Eh. Disagree. They're still incredibly handy to have in plenty of cases, especially for IT work. But based on my experience, the biggest users of USB sticks, who really shouldn't be using them, or at least not using shit quality ones, seemed to be people at educational institutions. It's actually insane how many school administrators, teachers, professors, and students came to us with broken, bottom tier quality USB sticks that had their only copies of critically important data. E.g. I actually failed to recover someone's only updated copy of their PhD dissertation from a broken USB stick. They apparently did have another copy on their laptop, but it was a much older version from many months before, which is why they were willing to pay so much for us to attempt the recovery. :/
I’ve no doubt people do this, but I think it’s best to treat them all as junk and always have backups. Then it doesn’t matter if the drive dies or gets lost.
I’ve no doubt people do this, but I think it’s best to treat them all as junk and always have backups. Then it doesn’t matter if the drive dies or gets lost.
I mean, sure. Ideally everyone should be following proper 3-2-1 backup procedures and then it wouldn't matter if their USB sticks were totally shit quality, broke easily, or got lost. But good...
I mean, sure. Ideally everyone should be following proper 3-2-1 backup procedures and then it wouldn't matter if their USB sticks were totally shit quality, broke easily, or got lost. But good luck getting even a tiny fraction of a fraction of the general public to do that, actually sticking to it long term, and also regularly verifying their backup copies are up-to-date and actually work. Data recovery services exist and tend to make healthy profits precisely because people are generally lazy, often don't even do basic backups (let alone 3-2-1), and expecting the majority to properly back things up is a rather unrealistic ideal. :P
So, IMO, there is something to be said for people simply owning a more expensive, more reliable USB stick so they are less likely to break, are more conscious of their cost so don't treat them as disposable, and are therefor less likely to lose or mistreat them. Part of the reason I am far more careful with mine is precisely because I know there are rather expensive NVMes inside them that I would rather not lose or break, and then have to replace.
I once watched an IT instructor at a community college prepare to blithely infect a whole lab room's PCs with the Conficker worm from a USB stick, until I yelled at him to stop. Really, USB sticks...
I once watched an IT instructor at a community college prepare to blithely infect a whole lab room's PCs with the Conficker worm from a USB stick, until I yelled at him to stop.
Really, USB sticks are the Devil, and shouldn't be used without boot sector protection and read-only access available, at a minimum. Kanguru still makes drives with a physical switch.
I'm pretty sure that's a really outdated concern, as evidenced by the fact that the worm in your example was only able to target Win32 era Windows Server 2003-2008/XP/2000/Vista. ;) AFAIK, USB...
I'm pretty sure that's a really outdated concern, as evidenced by the fact that the worm in your example was only able to target Win32 era Windows Server 2003-2008/XP/2000/Vista. ;) AFAIK, USB sticks being used to automatically spread malware hasn't been a serious threat to the majority of OSes for quite some time now, largely due to them no longer supporting USB autorun, amongst other things. So as a threat vector USB sticks are no different than any other type of external hard drive or even a data CD/DVD now. And if you're that worried about it, just DIY your own USB stick using an M.2 drive, like I recommended. Then you can know pretty much exactly what you're plugging into your computer.
Autoplay was the worst thing. Sure, it was nice to have your commercial software start up automatically when you inserted the disc, and it wasn’t a big deal when the only way to get those discs...
Autoplay was the worst thing. Sure, it was nice to have your commercial software start up automatically when you inserted the disc, and it wasn’t a big deal when the only way to get those discs made was to pay the big bucks for a factory to press your CD, but Windows kept doing it for years after CD burners and media were commodity items. And it never made sense to have that functionality for USB storage devices.
Yeah, it was never a good idea, and MS trying to keep it for as long as they did was super naive and/or negligent. Thankfully the dark days of multiple virus scans, and practically everyone's...
Yeah, it was never a good idea, and MS trying to keep it for as long as they did was super naive and/or negligent. Thankfully the dark days of multiple virus scans, and practically everyone's computer having malware/adware are seemingly behind us now. And as someone who has worked in IT (and adjacent fields) for over 25 years now, and had to deal with countless headache inducing cases of malware/adware infection in that time, I do not miss those days! Thank God everyone finally wised up and started taking fundamental security issues more seriously.
The Sogu USB malware uses a series of simple but clever tricks to infect machines and steal their data, including in some cases even accessing “air-gapped” computers with no internet connection. When an infected USB drive is inserted into a system, it doesn’t automatically run, given that most modern Windows machines have autorun disabled by default for USB devices. Instead, it tries to trick users into running an executable file on the drive by naming that file after the drive itself or, if the drive has no name, the more generic “removable media”—a ruse designed to fool the user into unthinkingly clicking the file when they attempt to open the drive. The Sogu malware then copies itself onto a hidden folder on the machine.
Yeah, that's no different than plugging in an external HD with the same virus infected exe file, or downloading it from the net, and someone blindly clicking approve on the UAC prompt after...
Yeah, that's no different than plugging in an external HD with the same virus infected exe file, or downloading it from the net, and someone blindly clicking approve on the UAC prompt after clicking the exe. That issue isn't exclusive to USB drives, @patience_limited. As I said, "as a threat vector USB sticks are no different than any other type of external hard drive or even a data CD/DVD now."
how is this even possible ? like I can understand someone not making backups but how is it possible to have your only copy on a USB stick? Was there a house fire or something?
someone's only updated copy of their PhD dissertation from a broken USB stick
how is this even possible ? like I can understand someone not making backups but how is it possible to have your only copy on a USB stick? Was there a house fire or something?
No house fire (although I have helped recover files from drives damaged that way before). IIRC, he supposedly had just been working directly off the USB stick at various different computers,...
No house fire (although I have helped recover files from drives damaged that way before). IIRC, he supposedly had just been working directly off the USB stick at various different computers, rather than on the version in his documents folder on his laptop, and hadn't backed up the USB copy anywhere else in months. I genuinely felt bad about not being able to recover the data, and even put in some unpaid OT to try to recover it for him, but he had also supposedly accidentally dropped it while getting into his car without noticing, and then drove over it, so it was in really rough shape. :(
p.s. We did offer to check his laptop drive for any traces of a more up-to-date copy, since Office actually did (still does?) temporarily store copies of documents you're working on in a local cache folder. And if he had given the laptop drive to us, even if the cached version had been deleted, we still might have been able to recover it. But he declined since the laptop was not the only place he had worked on it, and it had already cost way more than he wanted to spend. I did tell him where and how to look for a cached version of the file though, if he wanted to try to find it himself. I have no idea if he ever managed to though.
What do you think they are good for? I do think it is an unfortunate technological failure that we don't have a decentralised google docs (partly for privacy reasons, but also to...
What do you think they are good for? I do think it is an unfortunate technological failure that we don't have a decentralised google docs (partly for privacy reasons, but also to decentralise/eventually-consistent the content management itself for reliable offline operation). (My dayjob is adjacent to the metaproblem.) But, under the circumstances, people should simply be using google docs (or overleaf or w/e).
Well in my case, I have a multi-OS bootable USB stick, with a bunch of essential portable apps, and diagnostic/repair/data recovery tools on it. But even for non-IT people USB sticks provide a...
Well in my case, I have a multi-OS bootable USB stick, with a bunch of essential portable apps, and diagnostic/repair/data recovery tools on it. But even for non-IT people USB sticks provide a relatively quick/easy way to store and transfer files without needing internet or network access. Google docs and Overleaf are great, as is OneDrive/iCloud/Dropbox, etc. But they don't do a lot of good if you have no, slow, or unreliable internet. And in office and school environments, network storage and traffic are also usually monitored, so storing/transferring technically illegal files (like pirated content) or files you want kept especially private (privileged info docs, not just porn ;) can also be a potential issue.
If the device itself is monitored, then you don't want to be doing that with a usb stick anyway. If it is not, then your network traffic will not reveal much—the content itself will be encrypted....
in office and school environments, network storage and traffic are also usually monitored
If the device itself is monitored, then you don't want to be doing that with a usb stick anyway. If it is not, then your network traffic will not reveal much—the content itself will be encrypted. No network connectivity is valid, but fringe, especially as 1) I believe google docs lets you work offline in at least some limited capacity, and 2) in an office/school setting it is an institutional issue.
You and I run in very different circles, I guess. ;) Half the places I've done IT work for over the years have been small "blue collar" businesses (tire & oil change shops, mechanics, boat storage...
No network connectivity is valid, but fringe
You and I run in very different circles, I guess. ;) Half the places I've done IT work for over the years have been small "blue collar" businesses (tire & oil change shops, mechanics, boat storage yards, marinas, scrap yards, restaurants/diners, etc) that had no network, and usually no internet for most of their PCs either. So USB sticks/drives were essential, not just for me coming in to fix things for them, but also the people that worked there and ran those businesses. And half the jobs I've done at people's homes have been to fix their network or internet for them. :P
I see ... fair enough. I didn't realise this condition was so common. On reflection, this is not unlikely appreciably more secure in practice than the alternative.
You and I run in very different circles, I guess. ;) Half the places I've done IT work for over the years have had no network, and usually no internet for most of their PCs either
I see ... fair enough. I didn't realise this condition was so common. On reflection, this is not unlikely appreciably more secure in practice than the alternative.
It's definitely becoming less common with how cheap internet, modems, and wifi routers have become. As well as network cards now coming standard in most new computers. But cost often isn't the...
It's definitely becoming less common with how cheap internet, modems, and wifi routers have become. As well as network cards now coming standard in most new computers. But cost often isn't the major issue, it's technical knowhow to set any of that up that's usually lacking, along with stubborn resistance to change.
I think you would be shocked to find out just how many businesses, especially longstanding mom & pop and blue collar ones, still have ancient, internet-less, network-less computers stuffed in a back room somewhere that they keep all their critical data on. "If it ain't broke... why should I spend any money on something new to replace it!?" Asked the business owner a few days before their ancient computer, with all their vital business data stored on it, finally broke. :P
low-speed flash has always been unreliable in my experience. A lot of people know about the failure rates of spinning hard drives, but I've had considerably more failures when it comes to USB...
low-speed flash has always been unreliable in my experience. A lot of people know about the failure rates of spinning hard drives, but I've had considerably more failures when it comes to USB thumb drives and SD cards, especially the ones that were name-brand nice ones. A lot of them fail just sitting in a drawer in a climate controlled room.
Weirdly the only ones I have right now that aren't hidden away or discarded because they were bad were the cheap giveaway ones from Microcenter.
Honestly, having peeked inside so many of them over the years, it doesn't surprise me. Even name brand ones usually still have super cheap components and rudimentary solder holding everything...
Honestly, having peeked inside so many of them over the years, it doesn't surprise me. Even name brand ones usually still have super cheap components and rudimentary solder holding everything together, so I totally understand why even just tossing most sticks into a drawer can break them.
Thankfully, most are also pretty easy to fix though. So long as the chip isn't damaged, you can usually just resolder any broken connections, or even solder the chip into a compatible donor stick's working PCB, to get the data off them. And the ones with SD/microSD cards in them are even easier to "fix" since you can usually just pop the card into an SD card reader to get the data off them. :P
LOL. Indeed there is. We used a micro-soldering rig with a macro camera + monitor attached to it, similar to this, and a specialized, super fine-tipped soldering iron. But nowadays they even have...
LOL. Indeed there is. We used a micro-soldering rig with a macro camera + monitor attached to it, similar to this, and a specialized, super fine-tipped soldering iron. But nowadays they even have setups with microscopes and robotic arms controlling the soldering iron for even more zoom and precision.
If you want to learn to design/prototype your own, what you should probably be looking at is a breadboard (solderless circuit board). There are also a bunch of learner's kits out there that...
If you want to learn to design/prototype your own, what you should probably be looking at is a breadboard (solderless circuit board). There are also a bunch of learner's kits out there that include a breadboard plus a bunch of basic components (wires, capacitors, resistors, LEDs, sensors, etc), typically along with a project guide for learning the basics.
And if you want to get into a bit of programming too, Arduino actually even sells their own official starter kit with all of the above plus an Arduino Uno... but TBH it looks really expensive for what you get. So you would probably be better off buying one of the Arduino clone starter kits from ELEGOO instead, which you can also find on Amazon.
They're pretty popular on Amazon here in Canada for precisely that reason. And yeah, they make decent stuff, IMO. I've bought a bunch of other enclosures, cables, and various adapters from them...
They're pretty popular on Amazon here in Canada for precisely that reason. And yeah, they make decent stuff, IMO. I've bought a bunch of other enclosures, cables, and various adapters from them over the years and never had any issues with any of them.
I have some of their products and have been happy with them, but did read a claim recently about their USB power devices sometimes containing claims of certifications that they don’t actually...
I have some of their products and have been happy with them, but did read a claim recently about their USB power devices sometimes containing claims of certifications that they don’t actually have, which concerns me. I need to investigate that more, but don’t know how other than to check every product that I receive to see if it’s listed on the individual certification organization’s website.
I have not heard that...but it also wouldn't surprise me if true. Certification logos are kinda treated the same as fake brand logos in China, more for show than authenticity. For example cheap...
I have not heard that...but it also wouldn't surprise me if true. Certification logos are kinda treated the same as fake brand logos in China, more for show than authenticity. For example cheap Bluetooth headphones always claim to be "JBL" or "Bose".
Is there any hope for those of us who don't know how to DIY and just want to buy something readymade? I was looking into the Transcend 2TB ESD310, I like that it has both USB-A and USB-C...
Is there any hope for those of us who don't know how to DIY and just want to buy something readymade? I was looking into the Transcend 2TB ESD310, I like that it has both USB-A and USB-C connectors. But reading this thread has made me skeptical of all USB sticks.
As far as DIY goes, the M.2 USB enclosures are usually really really easy to put together, even for someone with no experience. You just buy an M.2 drive, buy the enclosure, and the M.2 drive...
As far as DIY goes, the M.2 USB enclosures are usually really really easy to put together, even for someone with no experience. You just buy an M.2 drive, buy the enclosure, and the M.2 drive slots into the enclosure, with a small screw to hold the drive in place. And so long as you don't tighten the absolute hell out of the screw, you can't really mess anything up.
And after skimming the review, it looks pretty decent, but was a tiny bit slower compared to some of the other prosumer competition and my DIY ones. But at roughly half the price of the competition it still looks like a decent buy. And it certainly looks a damn sight better than 99.999% of standard consumer grade USB sticks out there.
Oohh thanks so much for sharing all this info + the link to the review! Nice to see such a thorough review; sometimes when I search for reviews for a tech thing I feel like a lot of the "reviews"...
Oohh thanks so much for sharing all this info + the link to the review! Nice to see such a thorough review; sometimes when I search for reviews for a tech thing I feel like a lot of the "reviews" are just PR fluff.
Maybe I'll try the DIY thing later on when I feel more confident. I appreciate that you've given an overview of the process, you're right it doesn't sound so intimidating.
YVW! :) And yeah, Anandtech is usually really good for reviews and benchmarking, as is Tom's Hardware, and TechPowerUp. Those are the three sites I still trust, but they unfortunately don't cover...
YVW! :) And yeah, Anandtech is usually really good for reviews and benchmarking, as is Tom's Hardware, and TechPowerUp. Those are the three sites I still trust, but they unfortunately don't cover everything tech related, mostly just PC adjacent hardware.
But I hear ya. Other than those three, it sucks because so so sooo many tech review sites these days feel like they're pure PR, secretly sponsored, or even AI generated, and solely designed to drive you to their Amazon affiliate links. And even a ton of once reputable reviews sites like TechRadar, PCMag, ZDNet, and even WIRED's reviews all feel like that now too. They all just write basic blurbs for each product being "reviewed" or "compared" with an affiliate link for each. :/
Honestly, nowadays I tend to trust tech reviewers on YouTube more than most review websites. JayzTwoCents, Gamers Nexus, HardwareCanucks, Marques Brownlee, ETA PRIME, Linus Tech Tips, etc... are all far more trustworthy than 99.9% of the review sites found via google these days. And the nicest thing about YouTube is you can even find super niche reviewers too, like Vacuum Wars, whose videos are amazing. :)
I absolutely cannot stand most tech media. I honestly do not believe that any of them hire people with any sort of technical background at all because it seems they think every gadget they cover...
I absolutely cannot stand most tech media. I honestly do not believe that any of them hire people with any sort of technical background at all because it seems they think every gadget they cover is made of pure magic and sugar. It's one thing to be excited about a product, but if you're excited about everything then it's pretty clear you're just shilling at that point.
Nice, thanks so much for sharing the reviewers you still trust! Vacuum Wars absolutely sounds like a Youtube channel I'd watch even if I'm already happy with the vacuum I have 😂
Nice, thanks so much for sharing the reviewers you still trust!
Vacuum Wars absolutely sounds like a Youtube channel I'd watch even if I'm already happy with the vacuum I have 😂
This has been going on for a very loooong time. These days, good flash memory from reputable brands is so cheap, it's really hard to justify taking any kind of risk on discount mystery flash drives.
This has been going on for a very loooong time.
These days, good flash memory from reputable brands is so cheap, it's really hard to justify taking any kind of risk on discount mystery flash drives.
It's been nearly a decade since BadUSB made its debut, and the risks of malware-infected thumb drives have only increased since then. As a standard rule of thumb, I never connect any computer to...
It's been nearly a decade since BadUSB made its debut, and the risks of malware-infected thumb drives have only increased since then.
As a standard rule of thumb, I never connect any computer to anything (via USB or otherwise) unless I know the provenance of the connecting hardware, trust its provider, or have defenses in place like a USB condom. Promotional thumb drives go straight in the trash. Presume all unknown devices to be malicious... that's just good digital hygiene.
That's not even touching on the data reliability concerns in the article, those are just additional reasons why this stuff should be avoided.
Have they? Back in the day windows would literally automatically execute a binary the instant you plugged a USB in. These days to replicate something similar you’d have to exploit a known bug in...
risks of malware-infected thumb drives have only increased since then
Have they? Back in the day windows would literally automatically execute a binary the instant you plugged a USB in. These days to replicate something similar you’d have to exploit a known bug in the OS. And those are worth so much that it’s almost impossible the average user would ever encounter that kind of attack.
Computing in general seems to be getting consistently more secure every year.
I presume it's like this ethernet condom. Jokes aside, a USB condom is just a passive male-to-female USB adapter that strips out the data lines. Useless for flash drives, but useful for charging a...
Jokes aside, a USB condom is just a passive male-to-female USB adapter that strips out the data lines. Useless for flash drives, but useful for charging a device you may not otherwise trust.
My exgf is involved in theater and every show they do, she sells USB drives of pics and videos to sell to the parents. She always buys the cheapest bulk packs from Amazon despite me warning her...
My exgf is involved in theater and every show they do, she sells USB drives of pics and videos to sell to the parents. She always buys the cheapest bulk packs from Amazon despite me warning her not to.
1 GB of pics took literally an hour to transfer, and she had a failure rate of about 1:4.
Completely tangential, but his usage of "the jig is up" caught my eye as I was certain that it should have been "the gig is up" -- being a bit pedantic this bothered me, so I decided to look and...
Completely tangential, but his usage of "the jig is up" caught my eye as I was certain that it should have been "the gig is up" -- being a bit pedantic this bothered me, so I decided to look and learned that I am in fact the one who was incorrect:
The blog post says this: Oxford Dictionary of Idiom says this: And OED has this: (and a bunch more usage examples)
The blog post says this:
Shall we countenance this pretender version of the phrase as legitimate? I don't see how it can be resisted. To begin, both gig and jig are richly laden homographs in English: together they represent at least half a dozen meanings, depending on which dictionary you're consulting. So there's a good chance that speakers hearing one or the other word in the expression will be able to connect it to a sensible meaning. But speakers today are far more likely to be acquainted with a gig (temporary remunerative work) than a jig (16th century dance), and it's not that far a stretch to arrive at the correct meaning with either version of the phrase, or to conclude that gig is the form that makes the most sense — especially if you don't know a jig from a gavotte.
Oxford Dictionary of Idiom says this:
the jig is up ∙ the scheme or deception is revealed or foiled. North American informal
The sense of jig here dates from the late 16th century and means 'jest' or 'trick'. The jig is over is recorded from the late 18th century in the USA and the usual modern version with up appeared only slightly later.
And OED has this:
jig, n. 1
A piece of sport, a joke; a jesting matter, a trifle; a sportive trick or cheat. the jig is up (or over) = `the game is up', it is all over. Now dial. or slang.
1592: Nashe P. Penilesse (ed. 2) 38 “Let not your shops be infected with anie such goose gyblets or stinking garbadge, as the Iygs of newsmongers.”
1627: E. F. Hist. Edw. II, (1680) 66 “As with a Jigg of State might catch them naked.”
1663: Flagellum, or O. Cromwell (1672) 27 “When the Major now perceived the Jig, and how Kitchinman had fooled him, he could have pulled the Hair off his Head.”
1688: Bunyan Jerus. Sinner Saved (1886) 103 “By jiggs, and tricks, and quirks, which he helpeth them to.”
1735: Dyche, “Jig,..an arch merry trick.”
1777: Maryland Jrnl. 17 June (Th.), “Mr. John Miller came in and said, `The jig is over with us.'”
What do you make of the recent-ish trend where seemingly the entire internet simultaneously forgot that "wary" is not spelled "weary"? I'm weary of that trend...
What do you make of the recent-ish trend where seemingly the entire internet simultaneously forgot that "wary" is not spelled "weary"? I'm weary of that trend...
Weary is also a word though, so how are you sure they were misspelling it? Weary = feeling tired Wary = feeling cautious I'm weary of people being wary, and wary of people being weary. ;)
Weary is also a word though, so how are you sure they were misspelling it?
Weary = feeling tired
Wary = feeling cautious
I'm weary of people being wary, and wary of people being weary. ;)
It is definitely a word, and as you point out, definitely means something different. On the orange site I see it all the time: "I'm weary of taking the time to learn a new tech stack at this...
It is definitely a word, and as you point out, definitely means something different. On the orange site I see it all the time: "I'm weary of taking the time to learn a new tech stack at this critical stage of our startup when our runway is getting shorter every day". (A fabricated example, not an actual quote; nonetheless, a representative example).
I dunno, the orange site is one of the few fora in the world where I could imagine people having worked at so many failed startups they are unironically tired of the standard failure modes… In any...
I dunno, the orange site is one of the few fora in the world where I could imagine people having worked at so many failed startups they are unironically tired of the standard failure modes…
In any case, my suspicion is that a lot of these wrong-word substitutions come from phone autocorrect, with ones that happen often enough self-reinforcing as people mindlessly repeat them. While there are about a billion obvious confounders, my observation is that this error pattern has risen sharply with the explosion in people using phones on the web.
I don't think this is something that most descriptivists would agree with. In fact, I think most folks would disagree pretty strongly with that statement. Word don't always mean what you mean them...
words mean what you mean them to mean
I don't think this is something that most descriptivists would agree with. In fact, I think most folks would disagree pretty strongly with that statement. Word don't always mean what you mean them to mean. They mean what they are commonly understood to mean, in a given context. That means that it's entirely possible for a writer or speaker to be mistaken about how a word is going to be understood, either because they don't understand the meaning or connotations, or because they are using the word in a different context where it has a different commonly understood meaning.
Thanks for the recommendation, I'll check out that site, though it'll probably feed my neurotic side and it'll be even harder to read postings (even re-reading my own! haha) without setting off an...
Thanks for the recommendation, I'll check out that site, though it'll probably feed my neurotic side and it'll be even harder to read postings (even re-reading my own! haha) without setting off an eye twitch. :)
As someone who used to work in data recovery, and has had to repair countless USB sticks over the years... this isn't a new trend. There has always been shady, bootleg, low quality, cheap USB sticks with reject batch NAND chips, and SD/microSD cards in them. And don't even get me started on all the various tricks a lot of the shittiest ones use to make the drives appear larger than they actually are. Those were the real nightmare ones to fix and recover data from.
p.s. If you really need a reliable USB stick, your best bet is to actually make your own using an NVMe M.2 drive and putting that in an NVMe M.2 USB enclosure, like one from SilverStone, UGREEN, or Sabrent. Since at least then you know exactly what you're getting inside it, and those enclosures are a lot more robust.
You also get declared speeds out of your DIY USB "flash". I always find it difficult to find some reliable source for (especially write) speeds for all the flash sticks on the market. When USB3 became more used flash sticks with USB3 showed up but they could still have terrible 1MB/s write...
That too yeah. My DIY SilverStone USB sticks with Samsung 970 EVOs in them can reach pretty damn near full USB 3.1 Gen 2 speeds (10Gb/s). Whereas none of the off-the-shelf, consumer-grade "USB 3.1" USB sticks I've encountered, even Samsung ones, have come anywhere close to that.
Yeah, it's basically the same process for assembling pretty much all of them. However that video is really old, so Linus' setup is definitely not optimal at all. The enclosure he used (a SilverStone MS09) wasn't compatible with NVMe M.2, which is why he had to use a slower AHCI/SATA M.2 drive, and why he complained that it wouldn't be able to utilize the full 10Gb/s of the enclosure's USB 3.1 Gen 2 interface.
But nowadays you can buy NVMe M.2 compatible enclosures that actually can get the full 10Gb/s out of USB 3.1 gen 2 and above. So if you want a more optimal setup that can reach that full speed, instead of doing exactly what he did, just buy an NVMe M.2 drive, and make sure the enclosure you buy supports NVMe M.2 too.
AFAIK the only enclosures that don't support NVMe M.2, of the ones that I linked to, are those much older MS09 and MS10 models from SilverStone. Everything else, including the SilverStone MS11, should be NVMe M.2 compatible. Just CTRL-F "NVMe" on the enclosure's product page to be sure, although most have NVMe right in their product title or description, so it's usually not super hard to tell. You shouldn't have to go digging through their spec sheets or anything. ;)
YVW! Have fun, and if you need any more advice, or you run into any problems let me know. :)
I feel like for most use cases you just don’t need a reliable USB stick. Personally the only use I’ve had for them for a while is loading files on to machines like a 3D printer or playing a video on a TV where it doesn’t matter if they break. Even if you had a super reliable one, you can still physically lose it.
The only case I can imagine where it matters is something like live recording video to a portable SSD where you really don’t want it to fail before you get home and back it up.
Eh. Disagree. They're still incredibly handy to have in plenty of cases, especially for IT work. But based on my experience, the biggest users of USB sticks, who really shouldn't be using them, or at least not using shit quality ones, seemed to be people at educational institutions. It's actually insane how many school administrators, teachers, professors, and students came to us with broken, bottom tier quality USB sticks that had their only copies of critically important data. E.g. I actually failed to recover someone's only updated copy of their PhD dissertation from a broken USB stick. They apparently did have another copy on their laptop, but it was a much older version from many months before, which is why they were willing to pay so much for us to attempt the recovery. :/
I’ve no doubt people do this, but I think it’s best to treat them all as junk and always have backups. Then it doesn’t matter if the drive dies or gets lost.
I mean, sure. Ideally everyone should be following proper 3-2-1 backup procedures and then it wouldn't matter if their USB sticks were totally shit quality, broke easily, or got lost. But good luck getting even a tiny fraction of a fraction of the general public to do that, actually sticking to it long term, and also regularly verifying their backup copies are up-to-date and actually work. Data recovery services exist and tend to make healthy profits precisely because people are generally lazy, often don't even do basic backups (let alone 3-2-1), and expecting the majority to properly back things up is a rather unrealistic ideal. :P
So, IMO, there is something to be said for people simply owning a more expensive, more reliable USB stick so they are less likely to break, are more conscious of their cost so don't treat them as disposable, and are therefor less likely to lose or mistreat them. Part of the reason I am far more careful with mine is precisely because I know there are rather expensive NVMes inside them that I would rather not lose or break, and then have to replace.
I once watched an IT instructor at a community college prepare to blithely infect a whole lab room's PCs with the Conficker worm from a USB stick, until I yelled at him to stop.
Really, USB sticks are the Devil, and shouldn't be used without boot sector protection and read-only access available, at a minimum. Kanguru still makes drives with a physical switch.
I'm pretty sure that's a really outdated concern, as evidenced by the fact that the worm in your example was only able to target Win32 era Windows Server 2003-2008/XP/2000/Vista. ;) AFAIK, USB sticks being used to automatically spread malware hasn't been a serious threat to the majority of OSes for quite some time now, largely due to them no longer supporting USB autorun, amongst other things. So as a threat vector USB sticks are no different than any other type of external hard drive or even a data CD/DVD now. And if you're that worried about it, just DIY your own USB stick using an M.2 drive, like I recommended. Then you can know pretty much exactly what you're plugging into your computer.
Autoplay was the worst thing. Sure, it was nice to have your commercial software start up automatically when you inserted the disc, and it wasn’t a big deal when the only way to get those discs made was to pay the big bucks for a factory to press your CD, but Windows kept doing it for years after CD burners and media were commodity items. And it never made sense to have that functionality for USB storage devices.
Yeah, it was never a good idea, and MS trying to keep it for as long as they did was super naive and/or negligent. Thankfully the dark days of multiple virus scans, and practically everyone's computer having malware/adware are seemingly behind us now. And as someone who has worked in IT (and adjacent fields) for over 25 years now, and had to deal with countless headache inducing cases of malware/adware infection in that time, I do not miss those days! Thank God everyone finally wised up and started taking fundamental security issues more seriously.
How quickly people forget.
I'm wondering how often this works:
Yeah, that's no different than plugging in an external HD with the same virus infected exe file, or downloading it from the net, and someone blindly clicking approve on the UAC prompt after clicking the exe. That issue isn't exclusive to USB drives, @patience_limited. As I said, "as a threat vector USB sticks are no different than any other type of external hard drive or even a data CD/DVD now."
how is this even possible ? like I can understand someone not making backups but how is it possible to have your only copy on a USB stick? Was there a house fire or something?
No house fire (although I have helped recover files from drives damaged that way before). IIRC, he supposedly had just been working directly off the USB stick at various different computers, rather than on the version in his documents folder on his laptop, and hadn't backed up the USB copy anywhere else in months. I genuinely felt bad about not being able to recover the data, and even put in some unpaid OT to try to recover it for him, but he had also supposedly accidentally dropped it while getting into his car without noticing, and then drove over it, so it was in really rough shape. :(
p.s. We did offer to check his laptop drive for any traces of a more up-to-date copy, since Office actually did (still does?) temporarily store copies of documents you're working on in a local cache folder. And if he had given the laptop drive to us, even if the cached version had been deleted, we still might have been able to recover it. But he declined since the laptop was not the only place he had worked on it, and it had already cost way more than he wanted to spend. I did tell him where and how to look for a cached version of the file though, if he wanted to try to find it himself. I have no idea if he ever managed to though.
What do you think they are good for? I do think it is an unfortunate technological failure that we don't have a decentralised google docs (partly for privacy reasons, but also to decentralise/eventually-consistent the content management itself for reliable offline operation). (My dayjob is adjacent to the metaproblem.) But, under the circumstances, people should simply be using google docs (or overleaf or w/e).
Well in my case, I have a multi-OS bootable USB stick, with a bunch of essential portable apps, and diagnostic/repair/data recovery tools on it. But even for non-IT people USB sticks provide a relatively quick/easy way to store and transfer files without needing internet or network access. Google docs and Overleaf are great, as is OneDrive/iCloud/Dropbox, etc. But they don't do a lot of good if you have no, slow, or unreliable internet. And in office and school environments, network storage and traffic are also usually monitored, so storing/transferring technically illegal files (like pirated content) or files you want kept especially private (privileged info docs, not just porn ;) can also be a potential issue.
If the device itself is monitored, then you don't want to be doing that with a usb stick anyway. If it is not, then your network traffic will not reveal much—the content itself will be encrypted. No network connectivity is valid, but fringe, especially as 1) I believe google docs lets you work offline in at least some limited capacity, and 2) in an office/school setting it is an institutional issue.
You and I run in very different circles, I guess. ;) Half the places I've done IT work for over the years have been small "blue collar" businesses (tire & oil change shops, mechanics, boat storage yards, marinas, scrap yards, restaurants/diners, etc) that had no network, and usually no internet for most of their PCs either. So USB sticks/drives were essential, not just for me coming in to fix things for them, but also the people that worked there and ran those businesses. And half the jobs I've done at people's homes have been to fix their network or internet for them. :P
I see ... fair enough. I didn't realise this condition was so common. On reflection, this is not unlikely appreciably more secure in practice than the alternative.
It's definitely becoming less common with how cheap internet, modems, and wifi routers have become. As well as network cards now coming standard in most new computers. But cost often isn't the major issue, it's technical knowhow to set any of that up that's usually lacking, along with stubborn resistance to change.
I think you would be shocked to find out just how many businesses, especially longstanding mom & pop and blue collar ones, still have ancient, internet-less, network-less computers stuffed in a back room somewhere that they keep all their critical data on. "If it ain't broke... why should I spend any money on something new to replace it!?" Asked the business owner a few days before their ancient computer, with all their vital business data stored on it, finally broke. :P
low-speed flash has always been unreliable in my experience. A lot of people know about the failure rates of spinning hard drives, but I've had considerably more failures when it comes to USB thumb drives and SD cards, especially the ones that were name-brand nice ones. A lot of them fail just sitting in a drawer in a climate controlled room.
Weirdly the only ones I have right now that aren't hidden away or discarded because they were bad were the cheap giveaway ones from Microcenter.
Honestly, having peeked inside so many of them over the years, it doesn't surprise me. Even name brand ones usually still have super cheap components and rudimentary solder holding everything together, so I totally understand why even just tossing most sticks into a drawer can break them.
Thankfully, most are also pretty easy to fix though. So long as the chip isn't damaged, you can usually just resolder any broken connections, or even solder the chip into a compatible donor stick's working PCB, to get the data off them. And the ones with SD/microSD cards in them are even easier to "fix" since you can usually just pop the card into an SD card reader to get the data off them. :P
LOL. Indeed there is. We used a micro-soldering rig with a macro camera + monitor attached to it, similar to this, and a specialized, super fine-tipped soldering iron. But nowadays they even have setups with microscopes and robotic arms controlling the soldering iron for even more zoom and precision.
If you want to learn to design/prototype your own, what you should probably be looking at is a breadboard (solderless circuit board). There are also a bunch of learner's kits out there that include a breadboard plus a bunch of basic components (wires, capacitors, resistors, LEDs, sensors, etc), typically along with a project guide for learning the basics.
And if you want to get into a bit of programming too, Arduino actually even sells their own official starter kit with all of the above plus an Arduino Uno... but TBH it looks really expensive for what you get. So you would probably be better off buying one of the Arduino clone starter kits from ELEGOO instead, which you can also find on Amazon.
Wow, someone who knows Ugreen. It is a very good Chinese company. Good quality, and usually better prices than similar products.
They're pretty popular on Amazon here in Canada for precisely that reason. And yeah, they make decent stuff, IMO. I've bought a bunch of other enclosures, cables, and various adapters from them over the years and never had any issues with any of them.
I have some of their products and have been happy with them, but did read a claim recently about their USB power devices sometimes containing claims of certifications that they don’t actually have, which concerns me. I need to investigate that more, but don’t know how other than to check every product that I receive to see if it’s listed on the individual certification organization’s website.
Have you heard anything about that?
I have not heard that...but it also wouldn't surprise me if true. Certification logos are kinda treated the same as fake brand logos in China, more for show than authenticity. For example cheap Bluetooth headphones always claim to be "JBL" or "Bose".
Is there any hope for those of us who don't know how to DIY and just want to buy something readymade? I was looking into the Transcend 2TB ESD310, I like that it has both USB-A and USB-C connectors. But reading this thread has made me skeptical of all USB sticks.
As far as DIY goes, the M.2 USB enclosures are usually really really easy to put together, even for someone with no experience. You just buy an M.2 drive, buy the enclosure, and the M.2 drive slots into the enclosure, with a small screw to hold the drive in place. And so long as you don't tighten the absolute hell out of the screw, you can't really mess anything up.
Not every USB stick is total trash though. I have no experience with Transcend, so can't speak to them or that particular model. However, AnandTech has a thorough benchmark + review of the 1TB Transcend ESD310C, although they sadly didn't include a teardown to show off the internals.
And after skimming the review, it looks pretty decent, but was a tiny bit slower compared to some of the other prosumer competition and my DIY ones. But at roughly half the price of the competition it still looks like a decent buy. And it certainly looks a damn sight better than 99.999% of standard consumer grade USB sticks out there.
Oohh thanks so much for sharing all this info + the link to the review! Nice to see such a thorough review; sometimes when I search for reviews for a tech thing I feel like a lot of the "reviews" are just PR fluff.
Maybe I'll try the DIY thing later on when I feel more confident. I appreciate that you've given an overview of the process, you're right it doesn't sound so intimidating.
YVW! :) And yeah, Anandtech is usually really good for reviews and benchmarking, as is Tom's Hardware, and TechPowerUp. Those are the three sites I still trust, but they unfortunately don't cover everything tech related, mostly just PC adjacent hardware.
But I hear ya. Other than those three, it sucks because so so sooo many tech review sites these days feel like they're pure PR, secretly sponsored, or even AI generated, and solely designed to drive you to their Amazon affiliate links. And even a ton of once reputable reviews sites like TechRadar, PCMag, ZDNet, and even WIRED's reviews all feel like that now too. They all just write basic blurbs for each product being "reviewed" or "compared" with an affiliate link for each. :/
Honestly, nowadays I tend to trust tech reviewers on YouTube more than most review websites. JayzTwoCents, Gamers Nexus, HardwareCanucks, Marques Brownlee, ETA PRIME, Linus Tech Tips, etc... are all far more trustworthy than 99.9% of the review sites found via google these days. And the nicest thing about YouTube is you can even find super niche reviewers too, like Vacuum Wars, whose videos are amazing. :)
I absolutely cannot stand most tech media. I honestly do not believe that any of them hire people with any sort of technical background at all because it seems they think every gadget they cover is made of pure magic and sugar. It's one thing to be excited about a product, but if you're excited about everything then it's pretty clear you're just shilling at that point.
Nice, thanks so much for sharing the reviewers you still trust!
Vacuum Wars absolutely sounds like a Youtube channel I'd watch even if I'm already happy with the vacuum I have 😂
This has been going on for a very loooong time.
These days, good flash memory from reputable brands is so cheap, it's really hard to justify taking any kind of risk on discount mystery flash drives.
It's been nearly a decade since BadUSB made its debut, and the risks of malware-infected thumb drives have only increased since then.
As a standard rule of thumb, I never connect any computer to anything (via USB or otherwise) unless I know the provenance of the connecting hardware, trust its provider, or have defenses in place like a USB condom. Promotional thumb drives go straight in the trash. Presume all unknown devices to be malicious... that's just good digital hygiene.
That's not even touching on the data reliability concerns in the article, those are just additional reasons why this stuff should be avoided.
Have they? Back in the day windows would literally automatically execute a binary the instant you plugged a USB in. These days to replicate something similar you’d have to exploit a known bug in the OS. And those are worth so much that it’s almost impossible the average user would ever encounter that kind of attack.
Computing in general seems to be getting consistently more secure every year.
Device that connects the power lines but not the data lines (if you want to charge your phone without allowing any data connection)
I presume it's like this ethernet condom.
Jokes aside, a USB condom is just a passive male-to-female USB adapter that strips out the data lines. Useless for flash drives, but useful for charging a device you may not otherwise trust.
My exgf is involved in theater and every show they do, she sells USB drives of pics and videos to sell to the parents. She always buys the cheapest bulk packs from Amazon despite me warning her not to.
1 GB of pics took literally an hour to transfer, and she had a failure rate of about 1:4.
Completely tangential, but his usage of "the jig is up" caught my eye as I was certain that it should have been "the gig is up" -- being a bit pedantic this bothered me, so I decided to look and learned that I am in fact the one who was incorrect:
https://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/ll/whats-up-the-gig-or-the-jig-and-other-conundrums/
The blog post says this:
Oxford Dictionary of Idiom says this:
And OED has this:
(and a bunch more usage examples)
What do you make of the recent-ish trend where seemingly the entire internet simultaneously forgot that "wary" is not spelled "weary"? I'm weary of that trend...
Weary is also a word though, so how are you sure they were misspelling it?
Weary = feeling tired
Wary = feeling cautious
I'm weary of people being wary, and wary of people being weary. ;)
It is definitely a word, and as you point out, definitely means something different. On the orange site I see it all the time: "I'm weary of taking the time to learn a new tech stack at this critical stage of our startup when our runway is getting shorter every day". (A fabricated example, not an actual quote; nonetheless, a representative example).
I dunno, the orange site is one of the few fora in the world where I could imagine people having worked at so many failed startups they are unironically tired of the standard failure modes…
In any case, my suspicion is that a lot of these wrong-word substitutions come from phone autocorrect, with ones that happen often enough self-reinforcing as people mindlessly repeat them. While there are about a billion obvious confounders, my observation is that this error pattern has risen sharply with the explosion in people using phones on the web.
It appears to me that the person who you replied to is aware of the distinction, given that they used weary correctly in the last sentence.
I don't think this is something that most descriptivists would agree with. In fact, I think most folks would disagree pretty strongly with that statement. Word don't always mean what you mean them to mean. They mean what they are commonly understood to mean, in a given context. That means that it's entirely possible for a writer or speaker to be mistaken about how a word is going to be understood, either because they don't understand the meaning or connotations, or because they are using the word in a different context where it has a different commonly understood meaning.
Oh, nice... OED is a far better source than the one that I posted -- thank you.
Thanks for the recommendation, I'll check out that site, though it'll probably feed my neurotic side and it'll be even harder to read postings (even re-reading my own! haha) without setting off an eye twitch. :)