Report reveals decline in quality of USB sticks and microSD Cards

[midian182]

In brief: Joining the list of things that aren't as good as they used to be are microSD cards and USB sticks, both of which are showing a decline in the quality of their components. A new study found that more devices are using NAND chips with reduced capacity and their manufacturers' logo removed, while some USB sticks use the old trick of soldiering a microSD card onto the board.

The report, from German data recovery company CBL, concluded that NAND chips from reputable manufacturers such as Hynix, Sandisk, or Samsung that had failed quality control were being resold and repurposed. While still working, the chips' storage capacity is reduced.

"When we opened defective USB sticks last year, we found an alarming number of inferior memory chips with reduced capacity and the manufacturer's logo removed from the chip. Clearly discarded and unrecognizable microSD cards are also soldered onto a USB stick and managed with the external one on the USB stick board instead of the microSD's internal controller," explains Conrad Heinicke, Managing Director of CBL Datenrettung GmbH.

Most of the janky USB sticks CBL examined were promotional gifts, the kind given away free with products or by companies at conferences. However, there were some "branded" products that fell into the same inferior-quality category, though CBL didn't say if these were well-known mainstream brands or the kind of brands you've probably never heard of.

Technological advancements have also affected these NAND chips, but not in a good way. The chips originally used single-level cell (SLC) memory cells that only stored one bit each, offering less data density but better performance and reliability. In order to increase the amount of storage the chips offered, manufacturers started moving to four bits per cell (QLC), decreasing the endurance and retention. Combined with the questionable components, it's why CBL warns that "You shouldn't rely too much on the reliability of flash memory."

The report illustrates how some of the components found in the devices had their manufactures' names removed or obscured. One simply printed text over the top of the company name, while another had been scrubbed off completely. There's also a photo of a microSD card found inside a USB stick that had all of its identifying markings removed.

It's always wise to be careful when choosing your storage device and beware of offers that seem too good to be true. Back in 2022, a generic 30TB M.2 external SSD was available for about $18 on Walmart's website. It actually held two 512MB SD cards stuck to the board with hot glue – their firmware had been modified to report each one as 15 TB. There was also the case of fake Samsung SSDs with unbelievable slow speeds uncovered last year.

h/t: Tom's Hardware, Masthead: Karolina Grabowska

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/101774-report-reveals-decline-quality-usb-sticks-microsd-cards.html

 

[arrowflash]

In my experience, microSD cards have always been some of the most unreliable and less durable storage media ever designed, and also have the worst data retention for offline cold storage among flash memory devices. Even using good brand name microSDs, mostly as storage expansion on portable devices, I never had a microSD survive more than 2 years before kicking the bucket - usually suddenly and without warning or prefailure signs. I haven't used any microSDs since 3 or 4 years ago since storage in portable devices is usually enough for my needs nowadays. So, this report is saying microSDs made now are even worse?

I also haven't been using USB flash drives too much nowadays, last one I purchased was a 32GB basic Sandisk model around 3 or 4 years ago. But I find USB flash drives a lot more reliable and durable than microSD cards in general. I have 512 MB, 1 GB and 2 GB USB flash drives purchased from 2006 to 2009 that are still in perfect condition, and out of the dozens I've purchased over the years from multiple brands (mostly Sandisk, Kingston and Adata, and most of them still with me), I remember only two have failed - both from Kingston, and both were already pretty old. Their data retention is also pretty good, had USB sticks forgotten in drawers for more than 6 years, with all data still intact and perfectly readable by the time I tried them out. With microSDs, consider yourself lucky if they retain data for more than 6 months when in cold storage.

 

[TheBigT42]

That is why I use SATA SSDs to USB for stuff I really care about.

This Silver Stone is my favorite but a little expensive

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07B6747CY/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=A3GZEOQINOCL0Y&th=1

 

[p51d007]

I still have my titanium Sandisk 256 meg flash drive I bought when they came along. STILL works.
I try to stay with the upper tier of thumb drives. The "get a dozen for a few bucks" ones typically
fail.

 

[nismo91]

This is no surprise to me. I would rate microsd as the worst in terms of durability and speed. it's only good for small cameras such as dashcam because of its size. I've had so many microsd failed over the years, so I don't agree with those people who always cries new phone has no microsd slot!

some cheap usb drives are also bad in terms of endurance. few years ago I've installed android radio in two of my cars. I'm old school, so I have tons of mp3 and flac files for playback. I don't want to connect to internet just to listen to music. as it happens some of the android radio in the market have more than 1 usb port. so I put 2 or 3 usb drives to the car because I have so many folders it's just easier to navigate. guess what, I've discarded a few usb drives because they fail often even for a basic function that.

when my office have a few promotional usb drives to give away many years ago, I would be first in line waiting for one to keep. right now I don't want to waste my time with those drives anymore. that's how bad they are after a few years.

 

[Athlonite]

I don't think I've ever owned a USB Stick that had good perf ever, even the so-called USB3.0 ones are rubbish perf for anything other than sequential reads. I've also never had a MicroSD card fail on me but I do try to stick to good quality when buying them and only 64~128GB ones

 

[GeforcerFX]

I usually always stick to nicer Sandisk drives for important data drives, the cheaper ones are just OS installers that I can always remake. Only had one sandisk fail on me in 15+ years of using them so they seem to be going good so far.

 

[Bionix]

In my experience, microSD cards have always been some of the most unreliable and less durable storage media ever designed, and also have the worst data retention for offline cold storage among flash memory devices. Even using good brand name microSDs, mostly as storage expansion on portable devices, I never had a microSD survive more than 2 years before kicking the bucket - usually suddenly and without warning or prefailure signs. I haven't used any microSDs since 3 or 4 years ago since storage in portable devices is usually enough for my needs nowadays. So, this report is saying microSDs made now are even worse?

I also haven't been using USB flash drives too much nowadays, last one I purchased was a 32GB basic Sandisk model around 3 or 4 years ago. But I find USB flash drives a lot more reliable and durable than microSD cards in general. I have 512 MB, 1 GB and 2 GB USB flash drives purchased from 2006 to 2009 that are still in perfect condition, and out of the dozens I've purchased over the years from multiple brands (mostly Sandisk, Kingston and Adata, and most of them still with me), I remember only two have failed - both from Kingston, and both were already pretty old. Their data retention is also pretty good, had USB sticks forgotten in drawers for more than 6 years, with all data still intact and perfectly readable by the time I tried them out. With microSDs, consider yourself lucky if they retain data for more than 6 months when in cold storage.

I've only had Kingston fail on me as well. Most notorious Kingston Datatraveler 100 g3, 2 failed on me. Teamgroup was always cheaper and either they arrived passing flashchk verification or they failed and were returned right away, past infant mortality they lasted just fine.

That being said my most robust flash drives are the X-25e SLC intel extreme drives, still have a stack in usb enclosures, its too bad they never made them in larger capacities.