Do all USB3.0 flash drives get REALLY HOT?

[VirtualLarry]

I bought a 32GB USB3.0 flash drive from Microcenter, their "house brand" one.

It comes in a nice aluminum case.

I guess it's not just for show. When I was wiping it with vconsole.com 's USB flash drive tester, it gets REALLY HOT. Almost hot enough I can't touch it.

Is that normal? Do all USB3.0 flash drives do that?

Now, I hesitate to purchase USB3.0 flash drives that do NOT have a metal casing, to dissipate the heat.

Edit: In case anyone is wondering, it writes at 40MB/sec, and reads at 67MB/sec. Pretty decent, I think.

Edit: Before I did the wipe/test on it, I checked the capacity with a right-click and Properties on the drive.
It showed 31.5GB (decimal). So it doesn't even have the advertised capacity.

 

[razel]

It should not get that hot. I'd try it on another computer. That will at least narrow down whether it's bad design on the USB port or USB drive. Also 31.5GB decimal rounded up is 32GB. They're really stretching it, but I wouldn't worry. It is a Microcenter house brand. I'm sure you got a good price on it.

 

[kevinsbane]

Edit: Before I did the wipe/test on it, I checked the capacity with a right-click and Properties on the drive.
It showed 31.5GB (decimal). So it doesn't even have the advertised capacity.

31.5 GB in Windows?

You got a bonus! If it were advertised as a 32GB hard drive, then Windows would actually show 29.8 GB (GiB). I'm a little surprised actually that you got 31.5 GiB on a 32 GB flash drive. Maybe they only elected to put ~0.5 GiB of spare area on the flash drive?

 

[VirtualLarry]

31.5 GB in Windows?

You got a bonus! If it were advertised as a 32GB hard drive, then Windows would actually show 29.8 GB (GiB). I'm a little surprised actually that you got 31.5 GiB on a 32 GB flash drive. Maybe they only elected to put ~0.5 GiB of spare area on the flash drive?

Did you miss the part where I said "decimal"? 31.5GB decimal, is 31,500,000,000.

After the wipe pass with the USB flash drive tester, it shows 31,423,692,800.

So it's a bit short on capacity.

Edit: Hmm, it was getting kind of warm, just plugged in and not doing anything.

 

[trelin]

Can't help you on the heat issue beyond saying that I've heard that some of the "high speed" USB drives can get surprisingly hot; no idea how that affects the lifespan of the drive though.

To the capacity question, your numbers sound spot on. The problem is that when you go to the drive properties in My Computer, it's actually telling you the capacity after reserving some room for the filesystem. If you want to see the true capacity of the drive, open the format utility. If you go ahead and actually format it you'll find that different filesystems result in different amounts of useable space.

 

[MadScientist]

No heat problems with my Corsair Voyager USB 3.0 drive. Bad USB port??