what are some good fast high capacity flash drives?

I am seeking recommendations for fast, reliable high capacity (128 GB at the least, preferably more) flash drives for storing images while travelling.

Suggestions welcome.

Thanks,
Roberta Olenick
www.neverspook.com

For storage that big you might want to look at a portable SSD. Or you could go with a standard SSD and a USB to SATA adapter which might cost less but be less rugged. I should do this as well when traveling as it's a good idea.

You could install a SSD in a 2.5" HDD case like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product

which is a good SSD and this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product

which is an external HDD case which will fit the SSD. Put the two together and you have a high speed 256GB portable drive. You could install a 512GB drive for more $$

I appreciate the feedback, but I am looking for a thumb drive, not an external hard drive.

Thanks,
Roberta

Flash Drives are still a bit slower and generally more expensive than an external SSD drive.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/9 ... e_p10.html

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1 ... b_3_0.html

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KNK ... UTF8&psc=1

I have all three of these. The cheapest but slowest are the PNY cards. The lexar are reasonably fast but very expensive compared with the SSD and the SSD is still faster. That SSD is smaller than a standard hard drive and is only a bit bigger than the biggest flash card I've seen.

To get the listed speed, the laptop needs to have a USB 3.0 port. Without it, none of them are worth getting.

I got a Lexar 128GB flash drive (a.k.a. "thumb drive" or "jump drive") from B&H back in December. It was about $60 USD.....didn't seem too bad of a price for what it is. It works fine, with no problems.
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/control ... &A=details

I'd take a look at this new device.  It's small with huge capacity:
http://www.samsung.com/global/business/ ... rview.html

If you truly want a flash key, I think the Patriot ones are among the best and fastest and there is a 128GB and 256GB version - I personally use these:
http://www.amazon.com/Patriot-Supersoni ... B00B964QFO

The bottleneck with any of these is often the USB port of your laptop, if it is USB 3 it makes a huge difference. The other issues is whether you are transferring the data from the HD of your laptop or a camera card through a reader. None of the usual non-SSD drives can reach the read rate that the Samsung T1 is capable of writing at.

The Samsung device is probably better value for money but you will need a USB cable and it is slightly bigger in size. But it does look intriguing.

Pradeep

We do live in interesting times....

Thanks everyone. My laptop has USB 3 ports. The images will be transferred from it from a USB 3 card reader as the internal HD on my laptop is not very big.

Roberta

Hi Roberta-  
The flash drives EJ recommended are 250 megs a second: 64 gb $70, 128 $80, 256 $171 all on amazon.

Costco had a little 2 TB drive for $110: WD My Passport® Ultra™ 2TB USB 3.0/USB 2.0 Hard Drive.  Not sure of speed.

The lovely design new Samsung  EJ mentioned is 1 TB SSD is a whopping $600 but a screaming 450 megs a second. 500 GB is $300.  250 GB is $180.  This last one might be worth of serious consideration.

Since you only asked for 128, seems 256 is more than enough.   So $171 for the 256 flash drive at 250 megs a second, or the the new 256 Gb Samsung at only $9 more and twice as fast.


If the price tags are too much, one could opt for the costco unit at a whopping 8X the size (2TB) for $110 but it could be slow as a turtle, which might be why they do not even list a speed.

I am drooling over those trick Samsung units and I don't even need one or have the $.

The Costco thing is a hard drive, the rest are flash - apples and oranges

So a hard drive is like a record player with a bunch of moving parts. That is why I got a mac air back in 2009 when my vaio with a hard drive fell apart. The mac air had what the guy said was a giant CF card for storage. So I figured for on the road with all the jarring, a giant CF would be better than a record player. That old mac air is still chugging along with daily use. Some chatter on the web that flash drives were less reliable but I have found the opposite.

So I guess we should avoid the Costco hard drive thing as it might fall apart when on the road. I am also assume it would be vile on speed.

LOL, yes that is an analogy but as far as the actual recording medium is concerned a hard drive is more like a tape recorder while flash storage is an iPod

I use Supersonic Patriots Magnums as well when I really have to travel light (or as back-up to my Touro S 7200 rpm portable drives).  I started out with a pair of 128GB Patriot drives.  But like all drives, they slow down as they fill up (which happens quickly at this capacity).  So, I switched to a set of 256GB (plus spare) and never looked back.  I only had one bad Patriot drive but knew immediately upon purchase because it got hot/dropped from the desktop.  Patriot's customer service in CA was excellent and fast.