Lmst

💾 Recovered my external drive using the legendary testdisk utility.

macOS wouldn’t mount it, diskutil was hanging, and Finder showed nothing. Turned out the partition table was marked as “deleted” after an improper eject.

TestDisk helped me reassign it as primary, and boom - data back, no loss.

🧠 Lesson: ExFAT is fragile. Always eject properly.

#macOS #DataRecovery #testdisk #ExFAT #usbdrive #cliwin

Ubuntu 24.04 doesn't recognize 3TB ssd disk #2404 #ssd #usbdrive

https://askubuntu.com/q/1547956/612

USB External Drive not automatically mounted when plugged in #mount #harddrive #usbdrive #automount

https://askubuntu.com/q/1547677/612

Download iso to USB flash #usbdrive #downloads

https://askubuntu.com/q/1547429/612

🚀 Unlock the power of a dual-boot USB! Learn how to create a versatile flash drive with WinPE & essential tools. Perfect for troubleshooting & system repairs. 🔧🔌 Don't miss this step-by-step guide! #TechTips #DualBoot #WinPE #USBDrive #ITTools

https://pupuweb.com/how-to-create-dual-boot-usb-flash-drive-for-winpe-and-tools/

One of my USB drives died on me just now, it set itself in a "read only" mode. What graceful death, at least the data that's on them can be read. 😥
I have a hunch newer USB drives are not made as well as older ones, I have really old ones that works still. But the newer ones only lasted for a couple of mounts before suddenly killing themselves.

#usbdrive #usbdrives

Matt goes shopping: Where to buy an inexpensive USB drive?

In the third instalment of “Matt looks for the best deal online”, I am looking for a cheap USB drive. I want to give them away with content in them. Cheapness is my primary metric for these flash drives. They must be inexpensive but large enough to use when giving people folders full of photographs and related media. USB 3.x would be nice but I’m not all that fussed.

In this instance, 1GB could do the job. However, larger sizes would be nice for other projects. Thus “small” is those USB sticks with low capacity while medium and large should be self-explanatory. “Other” is where I note any interesting USB flash drives that otherwise don’t fit with my search needs.

In the table, USB 2.x is assumed and the faster USB 3.x is mentioned when it shows up. Some links are affiliate (UK) links, meaning if you click them, I get paid at no cost to you. Most links are just links though and everyone gets the same treatment. Price, brand, and probable quality vary considerably and it looks like you get what you pay for when it comes to removable media. Or not. Reality does not have to make sense.

Oh, one more thing – I only mention the brand of USB drive if, in my judgment, that could be a purchasing factor. That means these are brands I understand to be good quality indicators. If I’ve not mentioned a brand either I forgot or I just wasn’t familiar with them.

The table of results: Who offered what prices?

ShopSmall drivesMedium sizedLarger drivesOtherAmazon UK
(free p&p)This 2GB £4.79This 64GB £4.98This SanDisk 128GB 70% off £6.99This USB 3, 256GB, £11.19Ebuyer
(£1.99 p&p)n/aThis 64GB. USB 3.2 £3.29This Kingston 128GB USB 3.2 £5.19Kingston XS1000 1TB USB-C £62.99Argos
(£3.95 p&p)n/aThis 32GB Sandisk £5.99This 128GB SanDisk 25% off £6.99This 32GB USB 3 SanDisk £6.49Staples
(Free sometimes)This 4GB £2.29This 64GB £4.00n/an/aCurries
(£3.99 p&p)This 8GB £5.99This USB 3.0 128GB SanDisk £12.99This Integral USB 3.0 256GB £16.99Ebay*
(varies)n/an/aUnbranded red drive 128GB £1.19128 GB unbranded USB 3.0 £1.19

Amazon’s USB drive offerings

Unsurprisingly Amazon offers a wide range of USB flash drives all for roughly the same price point regardless of capacity.

I expected Amazon to sell the cheapest USB drives but I was surprised to discover that, once more, others had lower price points for flash storage.

Ebuyer’s above-average results for removable media

Ebuyer is where we nerds tend to shop. I was not surprised to find more USB 3 offerings, larger capacities, and a really good search and filter experience. In addition, I have found that Ebuyer reviews are dependable and trustworthy. As always, every technical detail was given. I do love Ebuyer.

There were no low-end old-gen crap offerings. Everything was reasonably modern. I would love it if they offered me a sponsorship and/or affiliate deal. Because I could praise them with all sincerity. I would feel confident that everything I recommended would be value for money and of good quality.

Ebuyer managers, call me; let’s talk.

Argos’ USB storage deals

Argos prices seem to closely follow Amazon’s wth similar search and filtering options. This leaves them running in second place as they charge for delivery.

There’s nothing much else to say. Their offerings were okay.

Staples’ USB drive offerings

Staples was surprisingly cheap on the low end but the search was unhelpful as there was no way to filter except by brand and price. Size was not an option so I gave up before finding any larger offerings.

Delivery is free over £15 which is tempting for a bulk buy. They cite price and price with VAT which I guess is helpful for business buyers. I don’t know what the low-end p&p price is as the view cart option was not working.

Curries for USB sticks

Largely seems to stock strong names in data storage like Kingstone, Integral, and SanDisk. They were not competitive on price but most of their offerings look like good solid choices for personal use. Even so, you can get similar products for less elsewhere.

Overall Argos and Amazon had Curries beaten on price and delivery costs. A safe choice if you don’t mind paying a bit more for no good reason.

*eBay was where it all went crazy!

The cheapest deals on eBay triggered my mental alarm for scams. They were pocket change prices and free delivery.

I found this listing where 128GB in red was the cheapest deal. Other colours and sizes were more expensive. I have my doubts if those others exist.

Then there was this USB 3.0 unbranded drive also for £1.19.

The thing about these deals as they all looked fishy AF. The USB 3.0 was a knock-off product from outside the UK and reviews that mention they sell many imitation items.

In each of these cases, I think the seller is in China. My gut says do not trust and the reviews suggest my gut might be right. This is cheap for a reason.

Conclusion: Where would I buy some cheap USB drives to give to people?

Once more I am forced to ask myself why I even pay for Prime. They run adverts on the streaming service and charge enough extra to pay for the 2free” postage and packaging. Amazon was not the winner of this roundup.

At the top end, Ebuyer wins hands down. Their stock is reasonably priced and of a new technology. On the whole, they offer more storage, good brands and some of the best prices. For everyday personal use, this is where to go. I would probably wait until I need to order other stuff to spread the postage and packaging into little more than a rounding error.

Ebuyer’s USB drives were mostly from dependable brands, less money than Amazon’s and with more storage. If I were buying for personal use, I would find a removable media of a size and price I can live with and get that.

This is not for personal use. In this case, I want cheap and somewhat disposable drives. There are two contenders for this crown – Staples and eBay. While eBay is the cheapest, quality is a dive roll and delivery time could take months. That leaves Staples for a job lot of low-end cheap USB drives.

If getting the cheapest as humanly possible is your aim, eBay wins. However, you had better be ready to wait a long time for products that might fail or not last long. Maybe they will be fine. Maybe they are as good as other offerings. Purely going from vibes, I have strong doubts.

Staples’ “small” offering was half the price and twice the capacity of Amazon’s similar offering. After illuminating eBay on scam avoidance vibes, they were the clear winner. After all, the files I need to give out all come in at under 1GB. I only need the storage device to be cheap, dependable for data, and likely to arrive before the next ice age.

If more people still used DVD/CD drives, I’d buy a few blank disks I have sitting about gathering dust. These days, that’s only an option for archiving backups.

If I spend more than £15 the p&p will be free. That’s slightly more than 5 (6 after rounding up). That puts the final price at 6x 4GB drives @ £17.94. That would get me three and a bit smaller drives from Amazon.

Final thoughts

There are two lessons to learn from this exploration of USB drive prices.

Always shop around for good deals
If something looks too good to be true, it probably is.

I hope my little window-shopping trip was useful to you. Where do you get your USB flash drives?

Syndicated to:

brid.gy

#alternatives #Amazon #ebay #Ebuyer #research #shopping #Staples #UK #USBDrive

The definition of #ingominy :

when I have to use an #Apple #MacBook under #macos to fix a #ScanDisk #USBdrive to be able see it on my Linux #nixOS machine
when the #gnomedisk #diskutility of the #Linux machine formatted the USB drive to render it invisible to itself.

#format #usbdrive using gnome-disk-utility 46.0 UDisks 2.10.1 (built against 2.10.1) on #nixOS made my USB drive unmountable and invisible, thought I think I followed this https://askubuntu.com/questions/285539/detect-and-mount-devices
The output of lsblk and lshw is shown in the images. The USB drive seems to be really bricked..... any ideas what I have messed up ? The drive is dev/sdc in the images and is a #ScanDisk device

New Episode: hpr4247 :: Installing GuixSD--Part Deux

Hosted by Rho`n on Tuesday, 2024-11-12 is flagged as Clean and is released under a CC-BY-SA license.

Tags: #Guix, #GuixSD, #installer, #install, #USBdrive, #MacMini.

https://hackerpublicradio.org/eps/hpr4247/index.html

Hello internet, does anyone know how to fix a malfunctioning USB drive. It seems to get power as its red light comes on. It even flashes during startup if the drive is plugged in. 'sudo fdisk -l' does not show a drive, mounted or otherwise, but windows 'disk management' shows a drive with 'no media'. It apparently has no partitions and nothing either 'unallocated' or formatted. It would appear that there is nothing to format. Although the disk management assigns a drive letter, it doesn't mount it.

#HelpNeeded, #USBDrive