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Dollar Store USB Sticks
msuffidy:
I was at a Dollarama just recently getting some sharpie pens when I checked out their gadgets and noticed there was a 32GB stick for $5. Taking it home, I quickly noticed I had binary diff errors that cropped up in writes of like 3GB. And a good number of problems. So at first I tried to use badblocks in linux and I was going to try to make partitions around hopefully a few failed areas, and badblocks said they were pretty much everywhere. I took the stick apart hoping there was bridges or cold joints somewhere. The flash was a BGA so I can't deal with that. What I did see was a lot of gluegun mess on the PCB as well as a hair that would be longshot being a metal filament. I removed those and so far it is working properly and at this moment I passed diff of around 10GB. Does anyone expect glue gun glue to tip the scale? Maybe a bad joint is working again for a while? Must be that damn R2.
eti:
$5 may be "only $5" but would you buy a cheeseburger with flies all over it? You've still wasted $5. I am never sure why people are tempted by "deals" like this. Pay proper money for a brand name when your data relies on it.
If it's "32GB" then that's a reasonable amount of space for me to presume you were considering storing a fair amount of data on it. The ONLY sane question could be "why bother?"
I have a friend who constantly buys "bargains" and cheap crap like this - why do people not see that all these small amounts soon add up? Bin it, and don't buy any more junk again... ok? End of lesson :P
msuffidy:
Here is the reverse side. It has now passed 25Gigs of binary difff. I mean there is 25 gigs of stuff on the stick right now. I think it is like a multi package pcb so you can put in a bga or a flatpack. OK JUST IN I DID GET PROBLEMS AGAIN so oh well. I just used some isopropyl and there may be a cold solder on the usb connector that I may investigate may be dipping the rails. I just resoldered where the usb port connects to the pcb, This is my last try and then I am shelfing it.
msuffidy:
That's it I give up on it. It does not seem to be reliable for whatever reason.
wraper:
Why do even bother to buy USB2 Flash drive. It's so slow it's pain to use. Also it's not a bargain, similar garbage class 32GB drive from reputable brand can be bought for less.
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