USB Flash Drives Without LED

The old tiny sized ones (pre 1GB, I suppose) have much slower read/write speeds. Particularly write speeds.

Also, I'm not sure if they use the same wear-leveling techniques as newer ones?

The basic idea is that a drive which is generally only half used would leave half of the capacity unused and the physical area of the other half used over and over, untill the maximum re-writes are exceeded and the drive fails, eventually.

Wear-leveling can help to prevent this by using the space more efficiently and equally, possibly extending the useful life span of the drive.

It's used extensively in the new SSD hard drives and I would expect it to be used in the newer generation USB drives also.

I would recommend the best size to purchase would be the best value for money at that time, personally.

Hard drives and now USB drives have always had a "sweet spot" of capacity versus price.

I would imagine that this sweet spot, at the moment with USB drives, would probably be around the 16GB models?

As for the LED's, unfortunately most makes/models employ an LED.

Some of the really old, low capacity drives didn't, but then it's a trade off of capacity and access speeds - if you can find one....

Some drives, like some of the Kingston range, fit the LED below the surface of the plastic casing, so it is not as prominent - at least compared to a surface mounted one!

Some of the ultra-thin drives (the type intended for key-ring attachment) don't have LED's.

You could always split the casing and disconnect the LED anyway?

Or, just tap the LED and break it!?

Here's another idea - how about employing the use of a USB extension cable and hide the drive away?

one?  It is a pain to seek around.

I use a little blob of blu-tac to hide away annoying LED's

Many thanks for the replies/suggestions all.

Peter

The LaCie USB key complete with a label - you can get all the HMHB albums on one, all the Beatles albums on another one, the Sandy Denny on a third, Shirley Collins on the fourth, the pre 1972 Kinks on a Fifth and the Captain on the 6th. That is it really because then you just need a UnitiQute and some Eclipses TD510s some NACA5 suitably terminated and a 240 volt supply of power on the desert island - and you're made up for a while. Assuming you like the same music as me, of course. 

I do most of my listening on my HDX via 3x32Gb USB sticks. They are Kingston or Verbatim. I think the last one was £26 via Amazon.  I get 50 to 60 albums on each in FLAC / wav mix, a lot less in Hi-Res. 

Navigation on the nDAC was non-existent and very frustrating, because that was the best sound I could get from my DAC.  Using the nStream app on the NDX works well with USB and is quick. It also means I can leave my PC off.

The Verbatim sticks have a blue led butyou can't actually see it from the listening position, because it's embedded near the front of the stick.

Regards

Huw

Sandisk Cruzer Blade 32GB and although they feel quite flimsy I've had no problems so far. 

 PNY sticks (metal casing branded HP) 32GB and 16GB are extremely robust and work similarly although they sometimes do need a slight wiggle to make proper contact.

Neither have any leds.  Write times aren't great on any of these more affordable  sticks but the SQ is spot on . With around 60 albums (WAV) on each I do create some higher level folders to reduce search time but the remote handset alphabetical search keys make things perfectly practical and each stick takes only a short time to 'load' onto a Uniti or Qute (less time than to select and load a CD).    

Slightly off topic; Is there a difference in flash drives and their transfer speeds that anyone has noticed in regards to SQ? 

On topic -

Sandisk user here too. No LED's

I use 4GB; enough for 4 albums or so.

Any more than 4 albums seems OTT to me given you're unable to navigate the drive's contents (except by advancing track by track of course).

Andy

...but the remote handset alphabetical search keys make things perfectly practical

Can you please elaborate on this? Are you saying you can go to a particular folder with an alpha command?

Huw, this is a really interesting comment.

I am thinking about a possible naim streamer purchase and was wondering about the practicalities of using USB sticks as the music supply. It was at the naim demo in Bristol where the penny dropped that the streamer provides access to music on USB sticks in a similar way to UPnP supplied music. How do you think the sound quality compares between UPnP and USB on the NDX? Isn’t it miles slower with USB compared to selecting and playing from a UPnP source?

256GB sticks are readily available and Swiss Army Knife is launching a 1TB stick soon. Ridiculously expensive of course, but who knows, maybe in the next couple of years it will be affordable to hold a modest sized music collection on one stick.

Gav

James,

Yes the alpha commands work.  Obviously you don't have the multiple options re artist/title etc., only whatever folder structure you build yourself, but if I plug in my soundtracks stick and press 'M' it goes straight to 'Master and Commander'.   I keep all my music as albums but should be no reason why a compilation of individual tracks, with any numeric pre-cursors taken out, shouldn't work just as well.

Haven't noticed any discernible difference in SQ between the two brands with Sandisk a bit quicker to write to, but both slightly better than wireless.

Considering trying the Lexar 128GB as next step (around £80) .  Should be good for 200+ albums (no art).  I'll keep you posted. 

Thanks Andy

That must be a feature available on the Uniti, right?

Handy.

Hi Gav,

I think the sound quality via USB is possibly better than over the network. On nStream the USB control is a lot faster than over my wired network. The only down side being the lack of album art. The rest of the meta date is there. 

I use JRiver as my UPNP server with an iPad app to control it. The JRiver app is much faster than nStream but can not control the USB port or the radio.  I don't recall the last time I used the network. I have about 150 albums over three sticks - broken up by category. 

128 Gb sticks sound a great idea and not too expensive either? I might get a couple.

Regards

Huw

Lexar 128GB stick arrived yesterday. Quicker to write to than the 32GB PNY and Sandisk ones (achieved 10-12MB/s).  Remarkably it seems slightly quicker to initialise on both the Uniti and Qute, around 5 seconds. No noticeable difference in SQ between any of them.  221 albums on 1 stick, no wireless drop-outs, no NAS nor computer left on. No media player/library software messing around with my folders. Nice.

Andy

(Does have a flashing led but the blue tac trick works perfectly) 

Please be hugely cautious when buying USB flash drives from eBay or Amazon - a large proportion of them are fakes which appear to your OS as the advertised capacity but actually just write over the same small amount of memory again and again.  Worth googling e.g.  "fake flash eBay" before buying.

The problem is caused by flash manufacturers selling faulty flash chips at 10c to the dollar which are then repackaged into these fakes.  There is no incentive for eBay or Amazon to address the problem, as they make comission on all sales, whether the goods are fake or not.

If you've ever wondered why Windows 7 demands to reformat newly-inserted USB Flash drives, it is to detect these fakes.

Look out for fake Hard Drives too.

http://outofmymind.scanlen.com/?p=1212