For those who missed out in January the sale is back on again. Be quick!
Back to $34.99 again.
CamelCamelCamel.
Copied one of the Amazon Reviews below… Just to highlight that you are getting what you pay for.
Still great value, but only as a storage drive. Performance will suffer as a portable OS drive.
On my Windows 8 machines, the maximum sustained write speed is 77 MB/s with exFAT. Reads were double that. Strangely, pulling from my RAID-5 network drive (which saturates my SSD with 113 MB/s writes), I saw a somewhat inconsistent 55 MB/s.
Block size had no impact on performance with exFAT. NTFS was 77 MB/s at larger block sizes and 72 MB/s at smaller ones.
You'd think that sort of performance would make this drive suitable for general-purpose use. Not so much. Random-write performance is awful; par for the course for almost all USB flash drives, 3.0 or not. The controller hardware in these things is rudimentary. I briefly had this PNY configured as a download folder for a program that would automatically reconstruct downloaded files. It couldn't keep up with my 5.5 MB/s (megabytes/s) internet connection. The program interface was constantly unresponsive.
While it's terrific bargain for general use (you won't find 80 MB/s sustained writes from a reputable memory brand for $0.39/GB anywhere else), I returned it in favor of a SanDisk Extreme 64 GB. Half the space and 30% more expensive, but with a proper drive controller that makes it just as responsive (and nearly as fast, with legit 150 MB/s+ writes and excellent random write performance) as an SSD.
It's not only slow, but it takes a relative millenia to be detected and initialized compared to a SanDisk Extreme which shows up in Windows Explorer about 3 seconds after you plug it in and I'm constantly having issues safely removing my 256GB PNY; it'll give non-stop warnings about the drive being in use well after I've closed all open file sessions on it.
Once in every 8 insertions or so, the drive will fail to mount at all; and I'll need to either try a different USB socket, try connecting/disconnecting it an inordinate amount of times or restart the PC for it to be detected again.
These issues I've seen on multiple PCs by now. In addition to it being cheap & nasty performance-wise, physically the slider on it is ridiculously stiff and it does feel like you'll eventually break it from the force required to move the damn slider into position.
It could be your AV scanning it in the background. Bitdefender does that for me whenever I insert any USB stick. I can't remove it until some time later when it finishes scanning.
Regardless, every other USB stick I have (Patriot Supersonic Boost XT, Kingston DataTraveler, SanDisk Extreme, etc) would be accessed by the same processes on all of these separate PCs; but yet none of them have these issues. It's just the PNY.
I bought 4 128GB drives last year and have had none of the problems you described. It has never failed a mount, shows up seconds after plugging in, and never had issues ejecting.
I just copied a 50GB file off the drive at 160-177MB/s onto my laptop.
I waited a few minutes then copied it back at 101-103MB/s.
If I immediately copy the file back onto the USB drive after deleting it, write speed is about 80MB/s. I'm guessing the few minutes of waiting allows the drive to run its garbage collection algorithms.
I frequently image computers with Acronis True Image. Being able to create images directly onto a fast USB stick is pretty convenient. No need to lug around a large mechanical hard drive.
The slider on mine doesn't feel ridiculously stiff either. It's stiff, but a good amount of stiff.
Maybe yours is faulty? Sounds like the QC isn't consistent.
The slider on mine doesn't feel ridiculously stiff either. It's stiff, but a good amount of stiff.
People seemed to agree here.
I'm happy it works and it's super-cheap portable flash storage but I do wonder about the longevity of these.
People seemed to agree here.
I think that like with most things on the net, people usually only chime in when they face a problem. If things work fine, they'll just use it.
I'm happy it works and it's super-cheap portable flash storage but I do wonder about the longevity of these.
Yeah, being so cheap I always feel there's got to be a catch somewhere. I haven't found it yet, but maybe it's just a matter of time. :)
@eug: These cheaper USB3 flash devices would optimise for sequential read/write. Therefore, testing it with large files basically is testing the best case scenario. It is the 4K random read/write that separates really good ones and ones which are just good for sequential read/write.
They are good for storing large files I guess.
It is the 4K random read/write that separates really good ones and ones which are just good for sequential read/write.
Are people actually running OSes on these drives? I thought "general use" means copying large files. Or 15,000 music files..
@eug: It really depends. For a 128GB USB 3 flash device, expecting a decent random write performance is probably not unreasonable. It won't be hard to find USB 2 flash drives (even the cheap 8GB, 16GB ones) with better 4K random write performance than this. For me, a 128GB or better device would need decent write performance (I normally use portable hard drives or SSD + sata to USB3 cable for >128GB).
But, at this price, one would expect a USB3 device that's optimise for sequential read/write. If you only store large files on it, then it will be fine.
thanks for that review, i was just tossing up between the sandisk extreme and the PNY. tricky decision between value and performance.
I bought this to attach to my Tablet. Hopefully it can keep up with HD streaming. No more boring flights now with 128GB of movies :)
I bought the 64GB one on December. I only use this to copy HD movie files from one computer to another computer or TV. You should not have any problem to watch HD movie direct from this USB drive.
Hey guys I am getting a NUC soon and am looking for a good USB 3 drive for OPENELEC, seems like this one is no good what should I expect a "Bargain" price to be for the SanDisk Extreme 64 GB?
OpenELEC loads entirely into RAM so random performance is way less of an issue than it is with a full OS. My PNY performs Win8PE duties (ie, also runs fully from RAM) and it's super fast.
That said, 64GB Sandisk Extreme is under $60 from PCCG, Shopping Square etc.
Thanks for the reply Steve.
If that's the case using OpenELEC for XBMC to scrap all coverart and stream HD contect with mods could become an issue with memory size if I only have 8GB RAM? maybe I am better suited to just running in Windows?
These are quite fast. Similar speed to the Sandisk extremes but way cheaper.
I wish 256GB was on special though.
Great deal thanks, gonna use this in my car for MP3s.
all 30,000 of them.
Make sure your head unit will actually accept a drive this large. I know some headunits have poor support for large drives and run really slow.
Thanks for the heads up! For ~$55AUD I'm happy to take a chance with performance.
Had one nearly a year good drive had no problems.
Wouldn't trust PNY after having TWO CompactFlash cards go corrupt on me in my camera and lost nearly a day of photos each time.
Never had the problem with same camera with Sandisk, Kingmax or Transcend.
A good friend of mine won't touch Transcend anymore (after losing heaps of files and the flash device is pretty much dead less than 1 month of very little use).
Just had a corrupted Sandisk Ultra 32GB 30MB SD card months ago (used on my 70D). Sandisk had exchanged it for free. In fact, there is no 100% reliable consumer level storage on this market unfortunately.
also had some Kingston 1GB SD Card failure ages ago.
I accept manufacturing defects happen but 2 from 2 with PNY, both within the first cycle of photos, and both irrecoverable is not acceptable for me.
Have three of these, two 128GBs and a 256GB. Haven't had a single problem with any of them.
It's gone up.
I'm getting US$39.97 + US$5.05 Shipping now.
Now US$35.97 + US$5.05 Shipping
SHIPMENT INFORMATION
Delivering to:
???
RESERVOIR VIC 3073
Australia
Carrier:
AUSSIE_POST
Tracking #:
99700160???????74501142303073 (Not yet trackable on AUSPOST system but it shows an eParcel tracking number)
Order #:
114-705857?-???????
Package Contains:
PNY Turbo 128GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive - P-FD128TBOP-GE
Quantity: 1
AUSSIE_POST…. I would take a guess it is AUSPOST… Does Amazon have australia warehouse>?
There was talk of Amazon opening a warehouse in QLD, but dunno what happened to that. Maybe they opened it after all.
Good to hear about it. Probably can get it by next Tuesday!!!
BAM! Bought two thanks!