Rugged USB Drive Group Test

[@zungruitelbitladnaternoche7305]

The Gorilla drive is waterproof up to 65 feet under water and the Corsair up to 200 meters. If I have one of those in my pocket and find myself at any of those depth, the resilience of these drives would be the least of my concerns. Thank you Mr. Barnatt for yet another excellent video.

[@ThisFinalHandle]

Good test but I was a little disappointed that Mr Hammer didn't make an appearance.

[@pendulousphallus]

Stanley the Knife, Mr. Scissors, and Lord Estwing of Fracture Lane.

[@slm60uk]

Also could've borrowed Big Clive's "Vice of knowledge" to test the internal construction.

[@chroma7247]

Lol they don't have the "Thanos Power" to erase it from history. didn't see that coming.

[@teebee5323]

Thanos mention got a immediate "like" smash.

[@ThisFinalHandle]

Timely video after watching Linus rant on USB naming convention.

[@kellerkind6169]

got a link to that video ? thx in advance

[@appalachianwanderer4634]

@@kellerkind6169 kzbin.info/www/bejne/nYTLg3Wpls2tjsk

[@thebeststooge]

Yep, I watched his video as well last week and it does piss me off that the USB forum thinks it is Pharaoh and can Mosses the standard.

[@photonboy999]

Me too. Good God the USB thing is incredibly stupid. Renaming USB3.0 to USB3.1 Gen1 and it only got dumber from there.

[@Corei14]

The standard can only be increased a big number of it changes a lot. But because they are engineers and stuck ups they have to change the revision number when they change anything at all or add another protocol to the transmission. however it should not be advertised like this but they do.

[@SuperHaunts]

Why do you need a USB drive? Privacy, portability, & preference! I don't want my business information, or banking information 'out on the web' for others to see. As for 'cloud computing' ... remember that "Cloud" just means YOU ARE USING SOMEONE ELSE'S COMPUTER.

[@billgross3579]

I still find a usb drive with PortableApps installed to be very very handy.

[@okaro6595]

I was on a local library reading microfilms of old newspapers on a computer. I thought I could just transfer screenshots to the cloud but the computer was not on Internet. I had to take photos with my phone. Since then I have always carried a USB-memory.

[@nunyobiznez875]

@Dean Mires Exactly, I couldn't have said it better.

[@patrickscheidegger3714]

Unless you have your own mini-server farm in the basement on fiber via your own NASA used for 9 months then auctioned at all prices missing 3 zeros, Cisco network, with some Australian illegal in the US, high-power extra channel WI-FI being beamed back and forth off an even more powerful repeater and antenna sitting atop the old Court House, tallest point in the county, which only your best friend has the only key to access up there as he is the keeper of the clock, and have it beamed back and forth between an old radio station antenna that just happens to be on your other friends’ 196 acre little farm 40 miles away in a near direct line with the highway between my small town and his semi-big city. Then you have your own little stinky cloud, that’s accessible just about everywhere you go, and if difficulty connecting, just break out the cheap cantenna or hack onto someone else’s WIFI and make a new hotspot. Then you use the thing like a CLOUD instead of simply backup storage, which is what 99.9% of PEOPLE THINK a cloud is for... You install MULTIPLE OPERATING SYSTEMS, ALL THE SOFTWARE and apps you could EVER need, ALL your MUSIC AND VIDEOS AND PHOTOS, and you RUN your pick of OS and the APPS you want FROM THE CLOUD, leaving your desktop, laptop, tablet, and phone ALL VIRTUALLY EMPTY except for your sensitive documents. No one else can even see your WI-FI as it’s on a “foreign channel” , but you still have firewalls and encrypted VPNs out the ass, plus traps built in, where you can see if ANYONE ever does “connect”, and if they do, you tempt them with some porn photos, free dvds, or just plain “internet”. This is where no matter what they do, they are raped with the collection of odd viruses that no security software is aware of, and they crash and burn as all their drives on all devices are systematically erased and filled with NASTY NASTY PORN, bomb plans, etc.. So basically if they try to tell anyone, they are arrested. And in the meantime, as you’ve been able to watch every step they make, everything has already been respoofed to one of MANY network configurations. That’s my REAL stinky cloud. Why no one else has one is beyond my comprehension. I suppose Americans will continue to use their little plastic boxes named Linksys, Netgear, etc..., thinking they are safe. LOL 😂 I even have a 16 foot wingspan “model ‘airplane’” that takes off and flies at 1500ft using the WIFI and GPS to fly itself 30 miles to the other city, where it lands perfectly on a small runway, carrying up to 3.5 lbs of cargo. It is refueled, and sent on its way back, and can make the trip faster than a car, if the wind isn’t crazy. Got a pile of copyrights and patents my lawyer drew up, and simply waiting for approval. Can’t wait till I have the power to sue the pants off people!!! “Lovin’ the 21st Century!” ၇১ 22:58-0600GMT - 6 APRIL 2019

[@MatCendana]

Can't fully depend on data stored in the cloud. As you have said, it's not "ours". Just that we are given an account and can log in. There's always the possibility that one day we might not be able to, for whatever reason. It's prudent to also store/back up important data in a USB drive. Or a few.

[@mrh829]

I think the main points of sliding drives would be: 1) no cap to lose, and 2) when tucked away, the overall physical structure of the USB connector is somewhat protected against getting bent, dinged, etc., when getting banged into things or dropped. As you've stated, though, it will do absolutely nothing to protect the electrical connections.

[@jaracgos]

I love your content Chris. Can't wait for the new nVidia Nano SBC coverage.

[@ExplainingComputers]

I am also eager to look at that board. It it supposed to ship to me in a week now. :)

[@jaracgos]

@@ExplainingComputers Awesome! I'll keep a look out for your coverage on the device in the next few weeks!

[@mattking6718]

@@jaracgos This is going to be amazing.

[@markschippel7974]

I have had my gorilla drive for well over a year. It has somehow managed to go through a wash and dry at the laundry (twice) and is still going strong. I have put a 4 inch, paracord lanyard on it so it won't get lost in my pocket anymore. Great video as always, thank you.

[@ShanaXinator]

Hey Chris, excellent channel. I'm thankful to have bumped into it. Also thanks to your SBC videos, I got myself a Nano Pi M4 with a SATA hat and now run my NAS on that! Saving power instead of running a full blown I5 6500 on H310. Thanks again and keep up the awesome work! Cheers :D

[@ExplainingComputers]

Great to hear about an SBC finding a useful application. :)

[@mattking6718]

The Gorilla drive is very impressive. I've just placed my order for one. I gave my 16GB USB 2.0 drive to a cousin of mine last week and needed a new drive. What great timing for this informative video to come out! Thanks!

[@rickarddt]

I've had the survivor for a few years now. While moving abroad it had most of our families important scans and documents in it. As a mechanical engineer I appreciate the design. Thanks for the review Chris.

[@MarceloLangame]

Olympic sport in 2020. We, the IT Nerds, entering the arena with focused faces and Tolkien's soundbooks in the earphones 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@ExplainingComputers]

:)

[@StevenIngram]

For me, the value of USB drives in 2019 is that you can use them as boot drives. Very handy for a multitude of purposes.

[@nathanmead140]

Or for VMs

[@Robb403]

Another great video. I occasionally give my drives the washing machine test for durability. If they can survive that, they'll tolerate most anything. I've used that method for garage door controllers, calculators and a flip phone or two in the past. Some hold up better than others. The tests are absolutely random.

[@resrussia]

Thanks for another excellent video on rugged USB drives. I am appreciative of your reviews and comparison's of computer hardware. Several year ago, your comparison of several secure USB drives was very helpful to my wife who often needs carry confidential data for her job. This review was helpful for me because I often do presentations at different locations within the organization where I work and sometimes the internet access is unpredictable. As a result, I like to be prepared in case the network is down. I am already looking forward to next week's video.

[@Conservator.]

Christopher your ‘opening skills’ are phenomenal!

[@ericartman0]

Thanks for the Crystal Disk info, I just got a 64 gig Gorilla Drive for $24.24 on Amazon, just what I have been looking for, thanks again.

[@beck3k]

While the video title sounded boring I was entertained the entire time. Your tests are very thorough. Excellent Work!

[@Poifix]

I always get hyped when I see that Chris uploaded a video. Thanks for the great content!

[@Jim-be8sj]

Watching your videos is part of my Sunday morning ritual. I wonder how a normal flash drive would have compared to these rugged drives. I still have a 32 mb Sandisk Compact Flash card which made it through the clothes washer and drier almost twenty years ago when such a card was comparatively pricey. That card, and the brand in general, has stood as my benchmark for performance since that day.

[@ashwinmohan4503]

Very nice video as always Chris, however you should have included regular old normal USB drives as well in the tests.. Just to prove the markup in price over regular drives. That would have completed this test, IMHO.. Keep them coming good Sir.

[@CommodoreFan64]

agreed 100%

[@mac11380]

As far as the drop test went, it would have been interesting to also drop a standard drive as we really don't know if the tough drives are really tougher if the standard drive would survive also. It would also be interesting to keep dropping the drives from higher and higher until they failed to see which is the toughest. Good video, thank you

[@rgbii2]

Nice video! I've been carrying around thumb drives in my pockets for years that always contain my current active projects, plus whatever fits. Since 2015, I've carried two 256GB drives, and just the other day I started looking for replacements. The two I carry still work fine, but are physically starting to fall apart, so this video is very timely. Thanks!

[@apoch003]

I'll admit, I have been waiting for you to do a video on this type of topic. Thank you!

[@jmtnvalley]

Never under estimate the beauty of a "sneaker net."

[@user-pz3fg6qk2z]

This continues to be the best video on the subject Thank you very much for the thorough review!!

[@ExplainingComputers]

Wow, thanks!

[@ElmerFuddGun]

I'm surprised these new USB 3 drives are that *slow* with your random average file copy. - 8:51 My old Adata 64GB (marked UE700/64GB) that I have had for 4 years or more did that same write test in only 33.4 seconds. Yes, I created the same 14 files with the same file sizes at 7:19 (very close) for a total of 2,159,919,701 bytes (which I think is a bit more than yours). Wow, what a difference.

[@TheFrenchy82]

I was a corsair 's addict for many years now... I think it's time to change.... thanks for your nice video ! :-)

[@lucasmayo]

Thank you for yet another well laid out and explanational video. One thing I would like to say, when you add prices you tend to use Pounds (GBP) and Dollars (USD) but not always Euros (EUR). I am sure you have a huge viewer community here in the Euro zone and we would be very grateful if you just take that little extra time to include the Euro price. Amazon .DE or .FR will do. Warm regards from Spain.

[@ExplainingComputers]

Point taken in Euros. :)

[@33lex55]

That was a whole lot funnier to watch than the title suggested!

[@sidneyclark4952]

Your outside sounded amazing! Wish the whole show was low reflection like that minus the wildlife of course. Huge reminder to me about the effect of the room.

[@ExplainingComputers]

I hear you. Where I record is not accoustically ideal.

[@dj_paultuk7052]

I used to travel all over the world and the Sandisk Cruiser Titanium was the USB drive of choice for me. But they stopped making them at 16GB. So I have 3. I once drove over one with a Ford F150 truck in the US and it still works fine to this day !.

[@Sheriffthegreat]

These videos are always entertaining yet informative! They always makes me look forward to my Sunday mornings :) Fantastic video, as always Chris

[@oysteinhaugen7055]

Your videos are always high quality, I really like watching them. Great content.

[@reggiep75]

Clicked like before the intro scene was over, took a few deep breaths and carried on watching! 7:36 - USB drive racing. More of that epic dry humour threaded in!!

[@peterthepanda]

How about speed tests on dual-USB drives? Those which have a USB-C/micro-USB connector on one end and a regular USB-A connector on the other.

[@samiam5557]

I really enjoyed the USB "races"!

[@arthurdent8091]

Very nicely done Chris.

[@perrymcclusky4695]

Looking forward to the Olympic USB Events in 2020! Plus looking forward to your next video, as always.

[@JoseLopez-oz1xm]

Great Vid Chris, Love your material as always, and yes I think MR. Hammer should have made an appearance Lol.

[@srtcsb]

I can't imagine needing a rugged thumb drive myself, but it's nice to know they're available. I agree with another poster about a nice whack with a hammer though... Might've yielded some thumb drive guts out for display :-) . Thanks for another great video Chris.

[@MatCendana]

USB drives - probably the most significant development when it comes to storage. The older ones here will remember the advancements from those days of floppy disks: from the 5.25" diskettes that held 320 KB of data, and then 3.5" with 1.4 MB. There was Iomega's Zip Drive which held more but not many had this. Anyway, CD and DVD later became standard in desktops and laptops. But when it comes to convenience and ubiquity, USB is the way to go. I'm impressed by how much data a USB flash drive can now hold, and the very reasonable prices. They are generally reliable enough but I've had a couple that failed. And one was from a well-known brand. Which goes to show that for prudence's sake, we should always have a few backups of important data just in case. And to check them every so often no matter how `tough and rugged' they are claimed to be.

[@ronjenkins4257]

What I'd like to see in a rugged drive is one that creates a smooth profile with the side of a laptop or desktop computer. Most damage to flash drives probably occurs when they get knocked sideways because they stick out and so are vulnerable to physical damage.

[@ExplainingComputers]

Very nice idea -- a market opportunity!

[@Wibblium]

I should take my Corsair survivor SCUBA diving to see how it holds up.

[@alexk1480]

explaining computers with original content ideas as always! edit: very much agree to your statement about local storage, it has the benefit of not needing a internet connection, wich isnt always available, and also often being the simplest way to store data

[@NewAgeDIY]

Very nice roundup of Survival USB Drives Chris. I have a USB 2 4GB sony drive that I picked up years ago. I sure it's gone through the wash more than 5 or 6 so times over the last 10 years and it still works great. All it has for protection is a flip over cover. When my wife gives it back to me I just let it dry for a day or so and plug it in. Never had any problems, I'm sure all the drive you tested will work without any problems if they get wet. Until next time ...

[@elviraeloramilosic9813]

USB drives. Can't live without them. Hello Chris. 👋 Great video. My enjoyable part of Sunday. All this OS multiboot options, portable programs, tools and diagnostic tools I have. On USB drives of course.

[@ExplainingComputers]

Hello Elvira! Here we are on another Sunday. I too have OS installs, utilities, stock data for SBCs and so on on USB drives. Until next week . . .

[@terrymcgill43]

I enjoy watching your videos Chris, I always learn very time you put new videos on KZbin. Well Done 👍

[@saadsalem6764]

Hey I guess the gorilla flash company should give a gold key chain for this fine demonstration, I really like it .BTW I will buy one if I found it .Best regards and thank you so much.

[@uzefulvideos3440]

Copying large amounts of small files would take an eternity on any of these drives except the JetFlash.

[@ExplainingComputers]

True.

[@Reziac]

Back in the early days of USB flash drives (we're talkin' the 128mb era), someone did a torture test on all the dozen or so brands then on the market. ALL survived being run through a washer and dryer. All but one survived being left all day in a hot car. About half survived being run over by a truck. By then they were getting desperate to kill 'em, and... One even survived being shot (well, the drive still functioned, and the data that wasn't physically carried off by the bullet was still good). These little buggers are tough!

[@r.m.renfield4541]

Great work, Chris, I love this channel.

[@y2ksw1]

With your teaching skills, even dry lessons become fluid 😊

[@MrDavidBFoster]

Which one will survive a two story drop taped to the bottom of a cinder block, is what I want to know?!

[@haxxy40]

I think the transcend drive won the writing test because, when you copy files, they don't actually write sequentially, they write at random locations on the flash memory to prolong its life, and if you look in CrystalDiskMark the transcend drive is way ahead of the others on random writes. (I might be mistaken, I didn't do any research.. It was just an assumption)

[@webzterd]

Bought a 64GB SanDisk duo usb for its type c connection last year. It's been through my washing machine multiple times, stuck in a tumble dryer, put on radiators, and it still works beautifully :)

[@amnottabs]

the most interesting thing about this is that those prices are what I pay for regular Class 4 USB 2.0 drives around here... now I'm considering importing a bunch of those Transcend drives for daily use

[@angkhoavo8004]

My normal 8GB HP USB drive (no cap) was being washed inside a washing machine and being soaked in soap for hours but it still survive in good condition now :D Still usable :) No need of being rugged.

[@wildbill23c]

One thing to keep in mind is read and write speeds don't matter if the drive doesn't work after it has been subjected to abuse. I have the Flash Voyager, and the Gorilla drive...both work fine, but as I'm finding out both work great across many systems and although they're not supposed to be rugged I have accidentally washed both and both still work...not only did they get ran through the washing machine they also survived the dryer as well, only thing I notice is the Flash Voyager seems to have a bit of adhesive that oozed out onto the USB connector which hasn't seemed to effect the drive's operation at all but it does help keep the cap on HAHA!!!

[@medstud]

Good video, BUT in real life USBs get thrown around the car and forgotten there for weeks, which means lots of sun and heat in summer. Would be nice to test those for heat resistance/insulation which absolutely wrecks the innards. Also, chances of USB drives getting dropped in dirt/dirty water are higher than nice clean clear water, and the former doesn't just dry up. I would've thought of a few more simple tests. I own the Survivor 128GB and it's the only one that's survived 4 years and counting heavy usage in a Middle Eastern country.

[@gregorysmith9706]

Great video, and very timely for me, as I am curently in the market for a USB drive. As to the question of the usefulness of a USB drive review in today's world - I would say it's still a good thing because if everyone else's newer car is like mine, if you want to put any music or pictures on your vehicle hard drive, you have to use a USB drive. My van will not recognize an external hard drive, even though it has a USB connection. Also for work, sometimes we use Power Point presentations that may have classified or otherwise protected information in it and with regular internet you would have to have a classified internet connection, whicn most of our computers do not have. So a USB drive allows one to take a presentation from one location to another with just a secure USB drive. So I say good show! As always. 😊

[@jezzermeii]

I love how abrupt that water test was, that made me laugh so hard. Haha. I wasn't expecting that! Lol

[@XSpImmaLion]

Cris, you were too gentle with those drives... xD But nice test! These days, flash drives are more likely to get destroyed by themselves with poor quality chips and whatnot than physically... so I think it's best for people to chose one by reliability. Unfortunately, I never heard of tests made for reliability like Backblaze does for HDDs... if anyone knows, please share! Personally, I just go for well known brands. There must be some statistic out there on failure rates by brand. Overall, I also think ruggedness in flash drives are kind of a scam.... well, not completely, but bare with me. Tiny small drives don't have enough weight to damage themselves if they take a fall. Cris could've tossed those as high as he could and let them fall into concrete floor, I doubt it would've damaged them. Funny enough, the most likely one to be damaged would be the heaviest one. Water ingress might be a problem, but all those solutions could be easily reproduced with a rubber case or something like one of those plastic tubes used to protect matches in camping gear. I don't think there's anything special about them internally.... perhaps some conformal coating, which doesn't cost a whole lot. Potting the circuit of a drive like that would probably cause some thermal issues, so it's a no go. That Survivor Stealth in particular is kinda ridiculous... it's basically a pendrive inside an aluminium tube with rubber gaskets, right? I bet you could get a regular pendrive plus an aluminium tube with rubber gasket for less. :P Put some foam in there and that should be enough. I am curious though about pendrives with internal encryption, fingerprint readers, and other security systems that also kills the drive if someone tries to tamper with it. But those are waaaay more expensive. Perhaps I'm a bit biased... but from personal experience, I have never lost a single pen drive to damage or even corruption since the very first one I got that must've had less than 2Gb capacity. Heck, don't think I ever lost any of the SD cards or MMC cards I got that were under 1Gb too. I think I still have my first MMC/TC card (same format as SD, but older) that I got on my first MP3 player... an ancient Diammond/Rio Nike edition thing that came out way before iPods ever happened. Oh, I remember... it was a 32Mb card! xD Well, I do take good care of them, but accidents have happened. :P Speed is a whole other discussion though... if you want reliable speed, then you'll have to see reviews and really go into it. But personally, if it's not for mission critical usage, meaning I don't really need the pendrive or SD card to be that speedy, I just get cheaper slower ones... they are slower, but they get less hot because of that, so there are even less chances of chip failure. But of all the problems pendrives and SD cards face today, the biggest one remains on sales of those with fake capacity and modified firmware to display a size bigger than it actually is. I have fortunately only got one bogus microSD card so far, and Amazon refunded me. But that's only because I already knew about the problem and had the software to test it. Always test your new sd cards and pendrives people, with the h2testw software. You really don't wanna find out that your sd card is fake during a photoshoot or something...

[@steve6375]

For a good practical test of small file transfer, find an XP ISO file, load it into 7zip and extract the contents onto the flash drive. The difference can vary from approx. 33 seconds (for a Sandisk Extreme Pro 128GB) to 45 minutes (for a Lexar P20 USB 3 128GB)! Both have similar advertised sequential write speeds. If you copy a single, large 2GB file then the times are similar, but not when you copy 1000s of small files!

[@tweaker1968]

More exciting than the Grand National... Thanks for another great video Chris!

[@okieinexile]

I once put my daughter's USB drive through a dishwasher. It still worked. It was a freebie drive than had been given her as bling.

[@DaveBoxBG]

From the water test you should have pointed out which drives float and which sink. Because if you drop them in water outside which is brown during rain or something you want to be able to see them. If they sink you will have a bad day if you did not notice the exact location if dropping.

[@ExplainingComputers]

All of these drives sink! :)

[@DaveBoxBG]

@@ExplainingComputers It almost looks like the corsair one wants to float but maybe you are right :)

[@iNowHateAtSigns]

Hi Chris, love your channel. I've been browsing KZbin & came up short - I'd love to see you do a RPi-compatible touchscreen shootout, to include other SBCs as well.

[@dhgodzilla1]

The Survivor doubles as a Fist Grip for self defense too lol jkg

[@ExplainingComputers]

!

[@DrNPCabd]

A true survivor!!! I don't remember the last time a used my thumb drive 200 m below water...😂😂😂.

[@wikingagresor]

Seems to me that the Survivor would be also EMP-proofed, so great for the prepper crowd.

[@dhgodzilla1]

@@wikingagresor Good observation since it has the Aluminium Case

[@esra_erimez]

I wasn't expecting the water to just appear like that and it startled me. For a moment, I thought you were filing inside of a toilet bowl.

[@MarioGonzalez-bo8yr]

Great video again Chris, now do the test to rugged external hard drives. I have one, an Adata, I just dropped it a few times and it is still working.

[@33lex55]

Hmm, maybe you're not dropping it hard enough?

[@MarioGonzalez-bo8yr]

@@33lex55 jajajajaja maybe, hope not to do so

[@Valjin]

Been using the Survivor for a few months, having it in my keychain. About 2 months in it snapped of the bottom, so when I open it, it falls out. Still works fine but not really what I expected from the product. Happend to 2 drives , so keep that in mind. They won't survive unscaved being in your keychain.

[@chainsaw2010]

Very nice. Thank you for the Real world copy tests.

[@bufordmaddogtannen]

A retractable USB drive can be carried in a pocket, without putting strain on the USB connector, which is safely housed within a hard plastic case. Often times, the connector is poorly soldered on (sometimes only the data/power pins are soldered), so a retractable USB drive can have an advantage.

[@watsoft70]

Another great vid. At last a "Real world" test of the devices, much better than the "Tested to destruction" attention grabbers you see on TV!

[@datasailor8132]

Other tests you could have tried would be, the washer/dryer test as others have alluded to, the scuba test 😉, both hot and cold tests, and some sort of rapid aging test. For the last I’d suggest several cycles of hot and cold. These are rather bulky so a side by side fit test would be interesting. Electrical shock. Oh the list goes on. Other thoughts: 1. I’ve found that the really big flash drives aren’t as handy as several 8 giggers. Most OS distributions and anti-virus tools will fit and anything more is wasted. 2. These could also be handy for archive storage in your safe-deposit box. Scan all your important documents like birth cents., marriage cents., important diplomas, your DD214, etc. I would hope your bank’s vault would survive an EMP. Very nice work BTW. I did notice that even with the exchange rate these command higher price taGS in GB.

[@niallwood]

I used a Sandisk Curzer Blade on my key chain for about 3 years and it works perfectly, I'm surprised it still does seen as it faced being bashed around in my blazer pockets back in year 8 and 9. It's got a few scratches and the name has rubbed off, yet it still works brilliantly.

[@bosunhiggs9708]

As I constantly remind people, "not everything is connected to the Internet." That seems to be an almost unthinkable state of affairs for many end users. Anyway, nice review. I have a Kingston DT SE9 G2 USB3 (completely exposed metal drive) that has unwittingly gone through the wash a dozen times or more because it resides in a pocket-within-a-pocket that I absent-mindedly miss a lot of the time. The water hasn't phased it yet, so I'll probably take the "water resistant" specs from the manufacturers as merely more marketing hype I can ignore.

[@reggiep75]

This just makes me want to get random rugged drives and make intentional silly videos for people to find, enjoy and realise that life is too short to be struggling with so everyone needs to just calm down, relax and avoid stress and similar aspects of life!

[@thefrecklepuny]

You don't like slider USB drives Chris? Well, I have a Toshiba model which has the bare gold contacts exposed! No cap or slide action whatsoever.

[@RandarTheBarbarian]

I'm going to get either the USB 3.0 Gorilla Drive or the Corsair Survivor but I'm undecided as of yet. One of the USB 2.0 Gorilla Drives has been my companion for years at this point and it's done the job, but as someone who has bent the USB connector a few times I like the idea that the entirety of the Survivor is encased in it's rugged housing, and the gorilla drive does have a little flex to it. I use it to store software I'd often use for PC diagnosis and repair so the thing basically has gone everywhere I have for something like 4 years on my keychain. I haven't killed the little bugger yet, but there's always a chance.

[@stephenbaldassarre2289]

Great stuff as usual. I have a cheap Sandisk that I've dropped too many times to count, it's been through the wash a couple times, still works perfectly.😁

[@cassandraroads5461]

Why USB flash drive these days? 3-2-1 backup rule. Use the flash drive to copy files to the off-site backup computer. Then store the flash drive on-site. Been doing that for years, both for work and for home.

[@tonicipriani]

I wouldn't exactly call the Voyager "rugged". I've destroyed at least 3 of those drives in the past, all with the same failure of having to bend the stick before it can connect due to broken USB soldering. Finally gave up the repeated RMAs and asked Corsair to give me a Survivor instead.

[@Sherlock385]

Great video, the drives race was very cool

[@mattparker9726]

Hey Christopher! Watching this armed with the knowledge of the upcoming cluster computer build, I have had a video idea. What if you attempted to make the cluster as rugged and small as possible? Including the gorilla drive as well, so the parameters of the build would be as follows: smallest possible form factor; one hundred percent waterproof; the least amount of power drawn in watts; and maximum usability potential. Sound interesting?

[@scottwatschke4192]

Well done video filming and presentation was excellent.

[@nutsnproud6932]

Thanks Chris. I have lost caps on USB drives so I use the retractable connector type.

[@ExplainingComputers]

Ahh . . .

[@brunesi]

This year I have switched to microsd card, 128GB. Because it fits inside my wallet, it's so convenient. As a suggestion, a video addressing and benchmarking some of the myriad of SD classes. One can have 20 class 10 SD cards, and very different read/write performances for each one of them.

[@ExplainingComputers]

Good video idea -- noted. :)

[@medworthy]

I completely given up on using actual USB storage devices and considering that I experiment (and use within "real world" situations) a number of single board computing devices (all of which include micro SD interfaces), I tend to use fairly inexpensive USB based micro SD adapters for specific purposes (such as for deploying operating systems to said SBC devices or for transferring files to non Internet enabled workstations).

[@samuelschwager]

The USB IF should get their shit together!

[@ExplainingComputers]

They most certainly should.

[@NicoDsSBCs]

Hi Christopher. Great races. That after watching the Tour of Flanders (cycling). That's why I watched your video later this week. :) Great video. I've always used sd-cards on the road since these usb sticks don't fit in my camera. But I've had cards dying with too much important data. I'll buy one of those to backup all the finished videos when on the road. I made my review video on the Orange Pi 3. The software is not ready yet. I've been working on it with the Armbian team, but a lot of work still needs to be done for it. No sound, can't reboot, hdmi display needs to be set manually, wifi needs work, USB3 works at USB2 performance, overheating problems, PCIe doesn't work, .... I now started working with the PineH64, the same H6 SoC, but the kernel for it is a lot better. Armbian for that is almost finished. Only no on-board sound/bad USB3 performance. But that's a lot less problems than the OPi3. The H6 does have a problem running at 1.8Ghz without a fan. Then it's a lot better running at 1.5Ghz. It's faster and a lot lower temperatures. PineH64 video comes soon with comparison with the OPi3.But with a good heatsink(size tinker board's) and a 5V fan at 3.3V it's sufficient. So not to bad. Have a nice day. Greetings. NicoD

[@ExplainingComputers]

Thanks for this. I've an Orange Pi 3 waiting to be covered here, so this is useful to know. Right now I'm working on a Rock Pi 4B video for next Sunday. I'm due to get the new M.2 extender board on Wednesday. :)

[@NicoDsSBCs]

@@ExplainingComputers With the OPi3 you could do Android now, but the Linux images from Orange Pi themself are very bad. Very outdated software, the kernels are a total mess. If you need an Armbian image, I could prepare one for you. Or you could build one yourself. It should be more ready and downloadable in a few weeks. There is VPU support comming for the H6 in kernel 5.2. But there's no work on on-board sound, and I don't know if the USB3 will ever work on USB3 speed. Also the PCIe will probably never work on the H6 boards. So the PineH64 model b is a better designed board since it lacks PCIe(because of this problem, it was on the model A) It is cheap, mine has 3GB ram. And it does perform well at 1.8Ghz with cooling. Best performing for this price(except the NanoPi Fire3) Good luck with the RockPi4. I'm a bit dissapointed that they've not improved their kernel. They had used the Tinker Board's kernel for the first images, but never replaced it with a well build kernel. So all the images have a lot of small faults because of this. They are very willing to help, but don't seem to realize they need to help so many people because of this. Greetings.

[@ExplainingComputers]

Thanks for this. It sounds like Orange Pi have not changed from last time I looked at one of their boards. We have similar experiences of Rock Pi / RADXA too it seems. Very willing to help, but some things to fix. The software is so important! This said, I've had no issues with Debian this week (a lot of updates came in), and have done several successful installs without incident. The latest Android is also playing 4K (if not accessing an NVMe drive as claimed, at least for me!).

[@NicoDsSBCs]

@@ExplainingComputers Indeed, OPi hasn't changed a bit. The software is still the same, they just port it to different devices. Still Ubuntu 16.04 and Debian Jessie. It's not a good thing only Pine64 and OPi have H6 boards, both the worst in software support. Radxa is a lot better compared to OPi/Pine64. They are among the best in software support. But I wished they kept on improving things instead of trying to fix something unfixable. They are working on mainline support. So that's why they're not replacing the faulty kernel. Their Debian is armhf(32-bit). So it doesn't get the most out of the SoC. But it's ok for most tasks. When Armbian is ready for the RPi4B then there will be VPU support for it too. For the NanoPi M4 it works great now. I still use the M4 instead of the RPi4B while the RPi4B has double the ram. I noticed a lot more trafic on their forum since your video. So you've had a big impact. I can't wait for my Odroid N2 to arrive. Still one more week waiting, I need it so badly for Blender renderings. I'm making a lot new background images for Armbian. My pc can't handle it all.

[@robertfletcher3421]

These do look good drives particularly the Gorilla. I too am wondering what need I would have but it is good to have a drive of this ruggedness in your pockets as you never know when it will be needed.

[@I_Am_Michael]

you could just test them like they used to test Samsonite suitcases. that would be interesting.

[@karm42yn]

What I've done was getting one of those aluminum pill container key chain things and epoxied a short San Disk flash drive into the short part. The casing is over 1mm thick and has a fine thread with an o ring. Extremely cheap and unless you expect your flash drive to sit on the bottom of the lake while an underwater tank division is having maneuvers, you'll be fine.

[@lohphat]

I too keep a drive with me. I prefer metal key type drives as they just sit on my keyring and I don't have to worry about durability. I've had them for years and they've never failed. There's one model with built in encryption to protect in case if lost or stolen: www.amazon.com/s?k=usb+metal+key&i=electronics Since I never really care of loss (backups, backups, backups), I'm not that concerned about water resistance.

[@etienne6641]

I agree with your results. Transcend is cheap and handy to copy a few files over quickly for a presentation or connect to a media device. Maybe you should consider a washing machine test next time to test water proof USB's. You know how easy it is to forget it in your pocket and throw it in the washing. If it survive the washing machine it should be good.

[@ianhollis51]

A couple of years ago I found a mangles USB drive in our front lawn that had dropped out of my sons pocket almost 12 months before. It had been out in the Western Australian weather (and frequently watered by my reticulation) during that time, before being ingested and discarded by my lawn mower. After all that time the connectors were showing signs of corrosion. However, when I plugged it into my PC all of the files were readable and were salvaged. Eventually, after showing the drive to all and sundry who would listen, the drive was discarded. So, I have 1st hand experience of just how rugged solid state drives are.

[@MiettedeThonTomate]

11'19, the way you have started the water resistance test with absolutely NO MERCY lol, mu ha ha h ah h ah h ah ha ha! Here in France we do have snail racing. A little bit slower though.

[@jamestaylor2607]

Marvelous video!

[@rolfsinkgraven]

Nice test, usb drives you can't do without them.