But its thickness is a problem for functionality: Even with the USB plug fully extended, the edge of the housing blocks the drive from fully plugging in to most rear USB-C motherboard ports, which tend to be slightly recessed to make room for the IO cover plate.
The top part of the plastic shell slides forward to cover the USB-C plug when not in use. One important thing to note about the Kingston DataTraveler Max, though, is that it has a pretty serious design flaw-at least for most DIY desktop users. That's nice for modern systems, but then of course you'll need an adapter for that drive any time you need to plug it into something that only has USB-A ports. Note that most of the drives tested below still sport USB-A plugs, so you'll need an adapter of some sort if you want to plug them into a Thunderbolt or USB-C port, although Kingston's DataTraveler Max drive has a USB-C plug. For the best performance you'll need a USB 3.1/3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) port, or a Thunderbolt 3/4 port which also incorporates fast USB. Just remember though, to actually take advantage of this kind of speed, you'll need to plug your drive into a fast USB port.
All four drives we're looking at below offer 1TB of storage, although in true storage fashion, you can find these drives in lesser capacities as well. These drives also sport capacities that could scarcely be dreamed of back when flash drives first became common. To get a sense of the high-end flash drive market here in late 2021, we collected four recent flash drives that promise speeds in excess of 500 MBps. I even drove over one once with my car while in college and it faithfully offered up all the papers I was working on, despite a cracked and partially crushed outer shell.īut because these drives often seem to work forever, and tech companies are always hard at work increasing speed and capacity, you could be hanging on to a drive that's pitifully slow by today's standards, and too cramped to hold all the things you might want to store on it. Over the years, I've had flash drives frequently go through the wash while hiding in a pocket and keep working as if I weren't so careless. Plus, a good flash drive can be shockingly tough to kill. You may also need a USB flash drive to do a clean install of Windows 11, especially if you want to bypass Windows 11’s TPM requirement. They're still sold everywhere (including chain drug stores, usually at heavily inflated prices), despite companies like DropBox, Google and Microsoft making cloud storage a convenient and often free alternative (depending on capacity).įor many, local storage that you can carry around in your pocket or on your keychain is still a better option-and faster if you don't have a fast internet connection on every device you use. USB flash drives have been ubiquitous for nearly two decades now, as they've remained the go-to option for anyone who needs local, portable access to important files.
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