Integral 128GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive Courier Blue

* PhysicalThumb drives are always useful. If I need to use FAT32, losing the extra 32 GB size to format is not too much. The 64 Gig size covers most day-to-day capacity usage. I have used this brand before. And they are reliable. If I use a drive for Linux Mint, or Zorin, to create a portable version of Linux, it's well able to carry this off. I have used one of these thumb drives to create recovery media for my Ashampoo Backup Pro v26.3 recovery system. This recovery system took a trial-and-error approach to make it operational. But by selecting to boot from this Flash drive setting in my UEFI Bios, it's eventually working now. I am happier with this to fall back on now. The big-sized, with USB 2.0 takes ages to load with data. I could try USB 3.0 ones, they are a quarter of the time to fill, but with a greater price. If no rush, these USB 2.0 will do the job. The equipment it will work with is most makes that support USB 2.0, can format for Windows uses FAT32 / exFAT / NTFS, Mac uses APFS / HFS+ / exFAT / FAT32, while Linux uses Ext 2 / 3 / 4, ReiserFS, BtrFS / FAT32 / FAT16Tip. To reuse a thumb drive previously dedicated to a similar to live Linux, look into Windows Administrative Tools / Disk Management and follow the wizard. Look for repartitioning and reformatting the pen drive. For exact help, go to YouTube and search for help there. Most times you will be able to reuse this thumb drive previously used for live environments. It is recommended that exFAT be applied to a pen drive as it is designed to optimise performance and protect pen drive's capacity. It's a journaled filesystem, and this protects data from corruption. However, if you choose NTFS, this is fine too. As you can read, the format with the wisest acceptance in computing is FAT32. But with a low capacity size of a maximum of 32 GB, and a max single file size of 4 GB.

It's hard to get hold 128GB USB sticks at present, so I was worried that these would be rubbish, given their affordable price. They are constructed much like any regular USB stick, they're not exceptionally tough or anything - but built well enough. When I connected them to my laptop I checked them with GNU Parted and discovered the partitions weren't aligned on them, hence data transfer rates would be a little slow. I deleted their partition tables and made a new table with a single partition spanning as much of each disk as I could, but aligned correctly. I then formatted them with the EXT2 filesystem. USB performance on Linux is slow for this type of storage, and the EXT2 filesystem makes this slower still; however performance was perfectly acceptable on these. I backed up a bunch of data to them and verified it all, and it seems to be fine. The first stick wrote the data very quickly, and it was done by the time I came back to my computer a few hours later. The second stick wrote the data pitifully slowly, at around about 1MiB/second; however readback speeds were completely acceptable. I put this down to potentially me messing up somewhere when specifying the partition or filesystem options. All in all decent USB sticks - and if you're a Windows user, you'll probably find they're very quick.

I knew what I was getting in for at the price: £10 for a 128 gig flash drive is a steal. Just be aware that it does come with its caveats, and they may make it unsuitable for some uses. TLDR at the bottom of the review.First thing I did when the drive arrived was start a full write test using h2testw. This tool will write data to the entire reported capacity of the drive and then read it back to verify that it works as intended. At the cheap price I was sceptical, as a lot of cheap USB drives are modified to pretend that they're higher capacity than they actually are. This, I am pleased to say, is not one of those.However, the test did highlight just how slow the drive actually is, clocking in at just under 12 and a half hours to fill the drive and read the data back off it. This was approximately 10 and a half hours to write, reporting an average speed of 3.16Mbytes a second, and 2 hours to read, with an average speed of 16.2Mbytes a second.My use for this drive is data archival, which took a considerable length of time to copy onto it, but I don't expect the contents to change on a mass scale going forward. Therefore, slow write speeds are less of a concern in my situation. The read speed, at least by USB 2 standards is perfectly acceptable, so I expect it will fulfill its role capably.Uses I can't recommend this drive for though would include running portable apps off it and using it in ways that involve frequently changing large amounts of data on it, for example moving videos or music in bulk to have them with you when travelling.The build quality is okay for the price, with a reasonably solid plastic casing and snugly fitting cap. The materials are obviously not premium, but I don't feel it's going to fall apart the second time I plug it into something.Overall scoring:SPEED (READ): 6SPEED (WRITE): 2VALUE (RAW CAPACITY VS PRICE): 9BUILD QUALITY: 7HIGHLIGHT: Sheer value for money.LOWLIGHT: Write speed limits faesible uses for it.

Perfect, good quality, arrived on time

Good value and excellent memory

I have bought this item several times, and whilst they are not the chaepest, and they are not the fastest, I always find them to be reliable, and doubtless, I'll buy more.

Works but painfully slow uploading images

Packaged well, probably a bit too much packaging if anything. Actual space was around 117GB, but no surprises there, you'll always lose a few GB. Quality seems good. It's a USB stick, does what its supposed to.