USB Storage Full Question

[Kevy Baby]

Just buy those USB drive with a hefty full size metal body, and not those mini ones. It does get hot due to constantly writing large amount of data to disk, and needs the surface area to dissipate heat. Plastic body traps the heat and fries the electronics in the USB drive.

The reason SSD don't fail as easily is because they are much bigger and has the large surface area to dissipate heat. I have had a metal body USB drive in the car for over 3 years now, still working good.

Plastic vs. metal body isn't going to make any difference. I had a (plastic bodied) thumb drive that operated without failure for two years and only got replaced with an SSD because I was running out of room for my music.

While I only have observational speculation as my evidence, but I suspect that the main reason a large number of these drives fail is because of counterfeit drives. Amazon and eBay are two supply chains I would NOT trust for drive integrity. Just because it says you're buying some famous brand doesn'rt necessarily mean that is what you're getting.

Again: purely my speculation, so don't ask for documentation.

 

[Gauss Guzzler]

Well there must be some reason that Tesla includes a massive, expensive, solid aluminum USB drive awkwardly protruding into the glovebox instead of Samsung’s otherwise identical compact plastic version.

 

[Kevy Baby]

Well there must be some reason that Tesla includes a massive, expensive, solid aluminum USB drive awkwardly protruding into the glovebox instead of Samsung’s otherwise identical compact plastic version.

Because that's what they got the best deal on. I would be surprised if their spec demanded an aluminum body.

And those drives fail as well

 

[Gauss Guzzler]

They’re buying 2 million of those usb drives per year. It’s not like Samsung just had some overstock of the aluminum ones and cut them a deal.

It’s possible that Tesla might be the largest consumer of USB drives in the world.