Flash memory on a USB stick is easy enough to understand concerning the way it works. The memory is a type of EEPROM and non-volatile, which is the reason it doesn’t require a battery or external power source to retain the information stored on it.

But if you ever asked the question, "Is there a difference between brands?", the answer is yes and no.

Concerning data reliability, all USB sticks are roughly the same. It is very rare that one would absolutely fail on you unless put it through several hundred thousand erase cycles. Some can even go up to a million.

Concerning construction, yes there are differences. Some sticks have a poor casing, causing them to fall apart prematurely. It doesn’t happen often but it’s not out of the realm of possibility.

Concerning data transfer rate, this is where the biggest differences lie. Some sticks are legitimately slow.

Sandisk (which everybody has owned at one point or another, I have 3 of them,) routinely has the slowest transfer speeds. Reliable, yes, but slow.

Patriot on the other hand routinely has the highest transfer rate. In particular, the Patriot Xporter series. You will pay more for these, but you will also get faster transfers, both for average and burst rate. The customer ratings speak for themselves on Patriot flash memory products.

(And if you happen to have $300+ that you want to spend, Patriot has a Magnum stick that boasts super-high speeds and has 128GB of storage. Yes, 128GB. That’s not a typo.)

Do transfer rates matter?

This all depends on how you use your USB stick.

If using the stick for:

• Bootable biz-card sized Linux
• Routinely transferring files over 25MB in size
• Routinely transferring large amounts of data

..then you will legitimately need a fast-transfer USB stick.

If using the stick for:

• Photos
• Documents
• MP3s
• Smaller files

..then a faster stick won’t really matter unless you’re transferring many small files equaling a large amount of data.

What’s your favorite (or least favorite) brand of Flash memory?

Sandisk, A-Data, Corsair, Advent, Lexar, etc.? Which do you use? Does it live up to expectation or "act weird" periodically?

I recently bought a Sandisk cruzer micro 4GB USB stick and of course it comes with that U3 crapola preloaded on it.

Formatting the stick does not get rid of it entirely.  If you click (in Windows XP) Start then Run then type COMPMGMT.MSC, click OK, then click Disk  Management from the window that appears, you’ll notice there are two partitions on the stick, one of which is a CDFS system labeled "U3 System".

Try as you might, there’s no way to get rid of it from there.

There are two ways to get rid of this stupid thing to reclaim the space.

First method: Load the stick in Linux and use your partition software o’ choice (like GParted) to remove it.

Second method: Use the U3 uninstaller program for Windows. Just click the "Remove U3" link there to download the program, then run it to completely format the stick to reclaim all the space back.

Sign of the times: I go into Walgreen’s the other day to pick up a bag of cashews (they’re quite tasty), and in the photo center I spot 4GB USB sticks for $16. Yes, I know you can pick up these things for cheaper elsewhere, but the fact a business primarily known as a pharmacy carries these things is what got my attention.

The brand Walgreen’s carried was obviously generic and not something you’d recognize. This got me wondering whether there is a true difference quality and reliability-wise concerning the flash memory inside a USB stick from one brand to the next.

Curious, I searched the internet to see if anyone has done any testing of flash memory reliability on a brand level.

One such place is CNET and they have a whole section on it. It includes just about every type of flash memory you can imagine with editors reviews, video and so on. The brand you have right now might be listed there, so you can see how it fared out.

The 2 top-rated brands for USB sticks are Sandisk and Lexar.

For everything else, the two top complaints are usually the same concerning USB sticks, that being "slow write speed" and design complaints (i.e. the plastic cap falls off easily, flimsy covering, etc.)

It would appear that yes, there are notable differences from one brand to the next. While a design flaw may be something most people could live with, slow write speeds would drive anyone bonkers (especially considering USB 2.0 transfer speeds are already slow to begin with).

The advice of the moment I give is this:

If you see some generic brand of USB stick, it’s a crapshoot whether or not the design will be solid or flimsy, and whether or not the data transfer will be speedy or not. It might be a few extra bucks for a Sandisk cruzer, but at least you’ll know what you buy will work optimally as it should.

(And by the way, yes the previous link will show you some 16GB versions of Sandisk cruzers. Pretty neat you can put 16GB in your pocket, eh?)

Unless it’s the storage capacity of a CompactFlash card.

The new Extreme III card from SanDisk will be available in October of this year for $300.

This is SanDisk’s largest-capacity CF card ever to date.

Who would want one of these things?

Odds are video pros would use this more than anyone else. The 32GB translates to 80 minutes worth of HD video – and that’s not too shabby a’tall. And even if you’re not a video pro, if your camcorder does HD and accepts CF, this would be a worthy upgrade.

For photo use, geez.. one can only imagine how long it would take to fill one of these up.

In addition, this means everything below the 32GB mark should go down in price. So if you have an electronic whatever-it-is that takes CF and are looking for an upgrade, check the prices right after October. You might find some sweet deals.

[Source: DVICE]

Sandisk recently acquired MusicGremin, a company who makes wi-fi enabled MP3 players.

For those that ask “Does that mean you can share music between players wirelessly?” Yes. Microsoft has had this feature available on their Zune model.

And for those that ask “Isn’t sharing stealing?” Not in the way this is done. The music is delivered via a subscription service, so all the bases are covered.

What we will see from Sandisk is (hopefully) some portable MP3 players on the lower-cost end of the spectrum in a price range more people can afford.

Wireless goes right along with portable. A portable electronic device today that doesn’t have some kind of wireless option, be it Bluetooth or otherwise, is more or less worthless because you’re still chained to wires in order to bring digital content on the device.

As early as ‘09 we should be seeing several MP3 player choices – all with wireless options – in the sub-$150 range.

For those keeping score with Apple, the iPod touch is the only portable media-specific (this excludes the iPhone) model that has any wi-fi option at all. And it costs $299.