USB Memory Sticks are a bit of a mystery to us all. What size should I get? Do these speed numbers make a difference to me? Should I get a USB 3.0 or 2.0 or do I care? These are all valid questions that most people out there simply don't know the answers to and end up buying a memory stick based on its color or style rather than what really matters. Let's see if I can help with these quandaries.
USB Memory Stick Buying Guide
Even an old dog like me can sometimes learn something new. I figured there were probably some minor performance differences between various brands and makes of Memory Sticks, but today when I finally did my due diligence before buying a few new sticks I was surprised to learn just how wide-reaching those differences are. So it became apparent that it is worth doing a little research before you purchase. More on that later. Let me give you a little basic information first just in case you are not yet a true techie. And I'll try not to get too long and drawn out with it.
For those of you who want all the glorious details about USB please have a look at the WiKi page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB
For the rest of us, it's enough to know that USB started out with version 1.0 then they came out with version 2.0 and eventually that went to 3.0. As of this writing, they are up to version 3.2, but the number to the right of the dot (point) is more about connectors, power, and compatibility than they are about speeds.
Most of us were all about the speed changes that happened with each new version of USB.
USB 1.0 specified a data rate of 1.5 Mbit/s
USB 2.0 specified a data rate of 480 Mbit/s
USB 3.0 specified a data rate of 5.0 Gbit/s. (5,000 Mbit/s)
Your eyes are not deceiving you. From 1.5 to 480 to 5000. Those are some major speed jumps there. So you would think that as long as you got a USB 3.0 memory stick you'd be flying fast! And you would be Sooo Wrong!
Memory sticks just like RAM that goes into your computer, come at different speeds. So just because the USB 3.0 Standard Specification says it can do 5,000 Mbit/s doesn't mean the memory in your stick will go that fast. So you really DO have to pay attention to those "transfer rate" numbers printed either boldly on the package or in fine print on the back. It's not unusual for a USB 3.0 Memory stick to have a transfer rate of 256 Mbit/s which is well below that 5,000 mark, robbing you of some serious time.
But wait, there's more! A typical advertisement for a USB 3.0 Memory Stick might say something like "Sequential Read: Up to 150MB/s". That seems to make sense except for that 150 MB/s. Is that the same as 150 Mbit/s you ask? Well, no, it's not. Mbit/s is "megabits per second" while MB/s is "megabytes per second". Using good old Google to convert we find that 150 MB/s is equal to 1200 Mbit/s. So now, when shopping you'll need to use your phone to calculate the real transfer rates because it matters and the sales geeks are using it as a marketing ploy to confuse us.
Even though the USB 3.0 standard goes up to 5000 Mbit/s the popular speed memory sticks are more around that 1200 Mbit/s. Which is way better than the 256 Mbit/s "standard" USB 3.0 memory stick that I was looking at earlier.
But none of that matters if your computer doesn't actually have a USB 3.0 port. There are still a very large number of computers out there in the world that only have USB 2.0 ports. So no matter how fast your USB 3.0 Memory Stick is, if you stick it into a USB 2.0 slot the maximum speed you could get would be 480 Mbit/s. And it's more likely that it would be something less than that.
Trust me when I tell you that this is just the very tip of the iceberg of information I could be giving you. But I think this is enough information to allow you to do a fair comparison of prices on memory sticks. Here is the formula for converting Mbit/s to Mbyte/s: Multiply the Mbit/s by 0.125. ex: 9 Mbit/s x 0.125 = 1.125 Mbyte/s. The reverse of that would be to take the Mbyte/s x 8. ex: 1.125 Mbyte/s x 8 = 9 Mbit/s.
Next, let's discuss how much memory storage space you should get. The size of Memory Stick really boils down to what you intend to use it for. If you are just wanting something that holds the same amount as a single DVD disc might hold then you want something a bit larger than 4 Gigabytes in size. A DVD holds about 4.5 GB of data. Or the size of a single Blu-Ray disc is about 25 GB. But if all you want is something to carry a few hundred spreadsheets and word documents that would be the smallest one you can find. I think, first and foremost, if you are looking for something that has a fast transfer rate, then get the largest size that has a price tag you can live with. I have found, over the years, the data will always grow to fill whatever the storage space.
Comments
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Thanks and best of luck.