PNY flash drives are pretty bad, aren't they?

[VirtualLarry]

They seem like the OCZ of flash drives. Constantly introducing new models, cost-reducing, etc.

I have a couple of 4GB PNY (and possibly a pair of 256MB PNY) drives that work fine, but when I bought an 8GB PNY (some years ago), I found out that it would overheat and disconnect from the USB bus after copying some 2GB of data off of it. (Read operation.)

Since I like to back up my flash drives in their entirety, that just wouldn't do.

I wiped it, and sold it to someone that would only be using it sporadically, cheap.

Anyways, I decided to try that tarnished brand again. I bought two 32GB PNY USB flash drives from BestBuy today for $19.99 + tax each. Thought it was a good deal, until I ran vconsole.com 's USB flash drive tester on it. First run, no write errors, but there were 480 compare errors. Those are when data is written, but not written accurately, and read back wrong.

I decided to take another spin through the flash drive tester, just in case it had remapped any bad sectors. No go. Now I'm up to 900 compare errors. The errors are regular, like there is a damaged NAND flash chip. So I guess I need to return that one. I'll test the other one next.

Edit: The second one passed the test fine. So it looks like I just got a bad one.

I went back to BestBuy and exchanged it, and bought an additional one (there were two left on the shelf). I plugged in the third flash drive and am testing it now, and it shows up as "USB20FD" in Explorer, and the write speeds are 6-7MB/sec, instead of the 11MB/sec I was seeing on the other drives. Looks like I got an older model controller, but it was in a newer model drive and packaging. Strange.

Poor QC on PNY's part.

Edit: Tested the second two flash drives, both of them reported as "USB 2.0 FD". Both were slower than the first two flash drives, 7MB/sec (on my Q9300/P35 desktop) and 5.5MB/s (on my C-60 netbook). However, both tested fine.

So, three out of four 32GB flash drives tested OK. So I guess I just got a bad one. Too bad that the second batch of these drives is so slow. 11MB/sec seemed speedy for a USB2.0 flash drive, but 5.5-7MB/sec is downright pokey.

 

[Kusnierek]

PNY is by no means a bad flash drive company. Personally I like SanDisk drives, and I have a Kingston right now. Patriot drives are fast but have a variable reliability record. Of course, Corsair has its high-end market. I'd avoid SuperTalent.

Just my opinions.

 

[Elixer]

I guess it depends on which version you are getting, and what brand.

It is too bad that some name brand thumbdrives are just as crappy as those generic ones you see floating around.

I have a sandisk cruzer 8GB, and that is the slowest USB thumbdrive I have ever come across.

 

[corkyg]

I have used Lexar Jumpdrives for a few years now - no problems at all. I have always avoided PNY as sort of the bottom of the flash drive food chain.

 

[Charlie98]

I have a sandisk cruzer 8GB, and that is the slowest USB thumbdrive I have ever come across.

I have a 1GB, a 4GB, and a 8GB Cruzer, they have never given me one lick of problems (minus the crapware included.) I got 7-8MB/Sec when I tested them with ATTO.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I had problems with a Sandisk 32GB Cruiser. It would hang hard when trying to install Linux on it. I ran the vconsole.com USB flash drive tester, and then I reformatted in Windows, and the size in sectors had decreased significantly. Apparently, doing the flash drive test caused the controller to map out lots of bad sectors. Too bad that they don't perform that step before selling it to you.

I also bought some Kingston 16GB flash drives, and one of them had recoverable write timeouts, which I thought was a passable error (figured it would just re-try), because the read-compare passed. But I just tried to use that drive for my Netbook's system recovery, and it failed.

Edit: Tried another one of the same Kingston 16GB flash drives, one that did pass the USB flash drive tester, and it still errors in around the same place. It seems like the source files for my OEM restore info aren't there, or are corrupted?

Oh well, looks like I won't be able to make recovery media.

 

[Centurion101]

Best avoided. I bought a PNY 32GB drive and it didn't even last a month before failing. Also the tech support page on their website doesn't work which is pretty shoddy for a tech company.

 

[UsandThem]

Best avoided. I bought a PNY 32GB drive and it didn't even last a month before failing. Also the tech support page on their website doesn't work which is pretty shoddy for a tech company.

All brands have dud products. I've had plenty of cheap USB drives not last very long from many different brands. Cheap USB thumb drives are designed to be inexpensive and convenient......and not for long life or high performance.

 

[mikeford]

I buy the house brand from MicroCenter, never an issue, and sheesh, 2012?

 

[Jimminy]

vc

@VirtualLarry

I tried that vconsole.com test program. Couldn't get several drives to pass the test.Just scrolling errors, but it does have a nice looking Gui.

Tried H2testw and they pass just fine.

It must be a Zombie too