Ask HN: Reliability reports for USB flash drives?

3 points by wp381640 4 years ago | 3 comments

Hi HN - I'm sure you're all familiar with the Backblaze HDD reliability reports. I am wondering if there is a similar report or just shared experience with USB thumb drives?

I am working on a project where we need to buy a bunch of them for a specific application that requires the storage to be reliable (write once, read only in emergency and hopefully lasts)

I'd be interested in hearing if there are any formal reports out there (I haven't been able to find any) or just anecdotal experiences. What brands are best, which models, which can handle a drop or two while also offering a faster USB interface and write speeds? etc.

ThrowawayR2 4 years ago |

Consumer USB thumb drives, like consumer-grade micro SD cards, are designed for minimum cost per bit and not for reliable data retention over long periods of time. If you're not familiar with the terms SLC, MLC, TLC, and QLC, you probably want to look them up and understand the implications.

Were I in your place, I'd start by looking for industrial SLC USB flash drive manufacturers (e.g. https://www.transcend-info.com/Embedded/Products/No-711 or https://www.delkin.com/products/industrial-usb-flash-drive/ but no endorsement of either is implied) and consult with their sales staff to find out what their data retention estimates are. If microSD cards are an option, industrial SLC versions are available as well, e.g. https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/SanDisk/SDSDQED-008G-XI... , which specifically advertises a 10 year data retention if only written once. Needless to say, they won't be cheap.

cpach 4 years ago |

Here’s one test: https://goughlui.com/2017/05/30/experiment-8gb-usb-flash-dri...

No idea if there is anything on the same scale as Backblaze’s reports.

Can you tell us anything more about the project/constraints? E.g. is it an option to write the data to Amazon S3 for reliable storage…?

wp381640 4 years ago | |

Thanks for the link - checking it out now

We want to ship the users a USB stick which they'll then plugin during setup and it'll save a (password protected) private key to it for long-term backup along with some metadata

So the goal would be that we can read the stick if plugged in again after a year, or two or three even after it has rattled around the bottom of a drawer or cabinet somewhere

I've found that it doesn't require much in terms of minimum unit order numbers to get a custom build - but I'd like to have a source of reliability data that is independent.

I'm contemplating doing a test lab ourselves - buying a bunch of keys and putting them through their paces, as there seems to be a real gap in comprehensive testing+benchmarks here