The Ultimate Flash Drive Buying Guide

So you finally decided to upgrade that cheap promotional flash drive with a transfer speed measured in bytes and a lifespan measured in months. Good for you! Storing important docs on a memory stick teetering on the verge of meltdown is just not smart.

Side note: If you have already lost some important data on a broken flash drive, don’t worry! You can get your files back fast by using FlashDrivePros’s guaranteed flash drive recovery service!

What features are most important to you?

Before even looking at what flash drives are available, it’s important to think about how you tend to use your flash drive.

• How often do you use your flash drive?
• How much data do you keep on it?
• Are most of your files big or small?
• How confidential are your files?
• Are your files backed up in other locations?

The answers to these questions will help you decide which features are most important to you in selecting the perfect flash drive.

Durability

If you use your flash drive a lot, work in a rough environment, or are just prone to breaking stuff, you will definitely want a flash drive with some durability. Not only do you need to consider the physically durability of the case and connector, but also the quality of the NAND memory chip(s) inside. Flash memory can only withstand a limited amount of use before the memory chips start to wear out. Some manufacturers use a feature called dynamic wear leveling that ensures all the memory blocks do their fair share of the work. For physical durability, you will want to find a drive with a strong, metal case and sturdy connector that won’t snap off when you bump the drive with your knee.

Capacity

Do you tend to keep just a few documents, pictures and the occasional video on your flash drive, or do you need it for transferring large amounts of data from one computer to another? Generally, you should opt for a drive that offers as much storage capacity as you will actually use on a regular basis rather than getting the biggest one money can buy. For one thing, you will save some money. Secondly, performance and durability begin to decrease with drives over 32GB.

Speed

Speed is very important factor if you plan to transfer files above a few kilobytes on a regular basis. Waiting 3 hours to transfer your MP3 collection can be very, very frustrating. For the fastest speeds available, you will want to go for a USB 3.0 compatible drive. While many cheap flash drives have transfer speeds of just 1MB/s or less, USB 3.0 drives deliver actual transfer speeds of more than 60MB/s. USB 3.0 is backwards compatible with USB 2.0 ports so you don’t have to find a 3.0 port to access your flash drive. And you will still get speeds as high as 25MB/s with USB 3.0 drives plugged into a USB 2.0 port.

Security

Work for the CIA or just really don’t want other people accessing your files? Several flash drive models come pre-loaded with component-level encryption. There are also a few software encryption programs on the market but we haven’t found anything that is user-friendly enough to use on a regular basis.

Backup

If you store anything even remotely important on your flash drive, you absolutely must have a system for regularly backing up your files! The geniuses at FlashDrivePros.com have developed a user-friendly automatic flash drive backup application called FDP Flash Drive Sync. The app is free to try and just $17 for license with free updates for life.

Having answers to these five questions should help you as you begin searching for a new flash drive. FlashDrivePros has also developed custom high quality flash drives with these five questions in mind. Check out http://www.flashdrivepros.com/High-Speed-Flash-Drives for more details.

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It's sure been a very busy Summer at FlashDrivePros!

New Products:We just launched our new ultra-secure cloud storage service that offers "security conscious" folks a way to get in on online file storage. We've also switched to a new OEM flash drive manufacturer that is building us some of the fastest, most reliable flash drives we have ever seen at a price that people can afford. Finally, we're just about ready to launch our new data recovery software. It is a wizard style application that takes you step-by-step through the process of recovering your flash drive files. We expect to release it by mid-August.

New Hires: We're happy to welcome Sean and Brian to the team. Sean, the new FlashDrivePros General Manager, brings both technical experience and many years of customer support experience with him to the Pros. When you call us with questions about flash drive recovery he is likely the first person you will speak with. He's able to diagnose most flash drive problems on the phone and is happy to answer any questions you have about our data recovery service. Brian is an electrical engineer whose circuit design experience and creativity make him an incredible flash drive troubleshooter. He specializes in repairing physically broken flash drives and diagnosing and replacing failed circuit board components and is also skilled in recovering memory cards with logical problems such bit errors and bad blocks.

New Location: To create some elbow room we moved the lab to bigger facility. The new lab is just down the street from the University of Washington which makes it easier for students with damaged flash drives to find us. It will also fit with our plans to create an internship opportunity for electrical engineer/computer science students.

New Affiliate Program: Check out our new affiliate program rules and rates to see the various ways to partner with FlashDrivePros: http://www.flashdrivepros.com/Flash-Drive-Affiliate 

So that's the update. We appreciate your support as we seek to make more and even better products and services available to a greater number of people. As always, we welcome your feedback.

Warm regards,
Ryan Stutzman
President

There’s no free lunch, as they say. And the adage appears to hold true with recent advances in NAND flash technology. Several flash drive and memory card manufacturers like PNY have been producing monolithic flash drives for years, and they are becoming more popular. While traditional flash drives consist of a microcontroller, one or more NAND memory chips, a crystal oscillator, and a host of resistors, capacitors and other electronic components that make a flash drive work, monolithic flash drives have all the components integrated into the chip itself. This allows manufacturers to create very small flash drives that can be placed on a key chain, for example.

Great, right? Not so much. If When monolithic flash drives and SD cards fail, replacing the microcontroller or swapping the NAND chip to another circuit board becomes impossible. This often makes recovering the files extremely difficult. Methods for extracting files from monolithic drives do exist, but the recovery success rate is much lower than with traditional flash drives and SD cards.

The FlashDrivePros suggest you either back up your files regularly with a program like FDP Sync, and/or just avoid monolithic flash drives altogether. The reduced size isn’t worth the trouble if you should ever need to recover the files.

FlashDrivePros.com is now the only major flash drive data recovery company offering genuine flat-rate pricing. Client after client has come to us after being burned by companies that offer low flash drive data recovery prices over the phone, but raise the price substantially once they have the flash drive in their hands, arguing that it's a "special case" and will require extra labor and parts.

These data recover companies know your documents are very important, and that you will likely pay a large ransom to get your files back.

Don't fall victim to their dishonest pricing schemes. Not only does FlashDrivePros.com offer the lowest prices available, we will never charge you more than advertised on our website.

Request USB Flash Drive Data Recovery Service:

What do you do? You got files you need in your flash drive, and you didn't get a chance to back it up. Well, you can breath a sigh of relief because the Flash Drive Pros can probably recover your files.

Before you hire us to rescue your flash drive files you may want to help yourself first.

Read this blog post:

Windows No Longer Recognizes My Flash Drive

If there is obvious physical damage, like you bumping the flash drive when it was plugged in, or you dropped it, this may be a hardware failure. Therefore, you may need to send it to a flash drive data recovery company like FlashDrivePros LLC.

Once you've gone through these steps and determined that the flash drive is still not recognized. You may want to send it to us. You can find out more about our services here: Flash Drive Data Recovery

If You Know All These, Then You Must Be A Flash Drive Hunk

No, seriously...we'd like to think we're the only ones. Okay for real this time. Here is a list of a few things that people may not know about flash drives, and that you should:

1. Flash Drives Don't Have LoJack (like your Range Rover does) - if you misplace a flash drive, you're out of luck; you can't call someone to pinpoint its exact location.
   
   
2. Flash Drives Don't Have AI's (its not KITT in Knight Rider) - AI (Artificial Intelligence), yeah like the one David Hasselhoff use to drive. If you're flash drive did have an AI, it would know how to back itself up, how to make itself faster, and protect itself from all forms of viruses and intrusions.
   
   
3. Flash Drives Are Not Indestructible (only Superman is) - so if you bump it while it's plugged into your computer, the USB connector can stop working. If you accidentally dropped it in your dog's mouth, and it starts chewing on it...say goodbye to your data. Another thing to mention, is that over time, you're going to wear the flash drive memory chip out. Read this post on when to replace a flash drive.
   
   
4. Cheap Flash Drives Suck (don't buy them) - this seems to be happening a lot, we get tons of cheap flash drives that need data recovery. Its because they break easily. If it's not a good reliable brand, be cautious. Don't believe me, check this out. One way to find out if your flash drive is cheap...
   
   
5. Flash Drives Will Lie To You (only 'coz it was programmed to) - and the guy from the TV show "Lie To Me" won't be able to help you until it's too late. How? Lets say you buy a cheap flash drive, and you think you got 4GB in it, and later on you use it, and you can only put half that amount, you'll know the flash drive is lying to you. Yes, you really only have 2 GB worth of space, but you paid for a 4GB flash drive.
   
   
6. Flash Drive Files Hang Around (not your typical monkey) - this is important. Let's say you accidentally deleted some files, and then stopped using your flash drive immediately, take it to a flash drive data recovery company (Ahhheemmm!!) and get those deleted files recovered. If you use it, you may write over the deleted files.
   
   
7. You Can Clone A Flash Drive (the soul can be transferred) - especially for some of you who utilize your flash drives quite a bit, you'll need a flash drive backup application to backup your important data. This way if you ever lose it, or it gets physically damaged, you won't have to dish out some money to get your data recovered.

Things happen; computer parts or electronics eventually wear down or get damaged for whatever reason. So if you ever find yourself in this jam, just know, don't throw your flash drive away and lose valuable data. Send it to a flash drive data recovery service provider.

Hope that helps!!

If you have another to add, just let us know, and we'll add it on here.

FREE May Just Be A Rat Trap Service SCAM That Can Cost You More

Many experts say that we are getting in the new era of FREE economy. We get lots of FREE things now, like Pandora.com, where you can listen to FREE music, or Hulu.com, where you can watch some of your favorite shows and movies. This is of course possible, due to advertising sponsorships. I think this is a great way of doing FREE services.

Where things get mushy or I would say down out sketchy, is where service providers start selling FREE in attempt to get you hooked and baited, trapping you into their web of deceit, because you weren't cautious enough to look around.

Don't believe me? If I were to tell you, hey, I can get you a website for FREE, no cost to you at all. You're thinking, that's great, what's the catch? Well, we'd have to charge you for web hosting and for a domain. Okay, that's seems fair.

So what's the hidden catch. Well, what I didn't tell you, or you didn't further ask is that the hosting and domain will cost you a pretty penny. Furthermore, other services or products you need, you can only get from us, you can't go anywhere else. Not cool with that? Well, we have your website hostage. 

I don't think you'd like at all. 

You see, tactics like this, are pretty common. Some are really honest and good practices, but others, they just move the INITIAL COST somewhere else. So in essence, you're really paying the same thing, if not more.

That's why here at FDP, our prices are simple. There are no hidden costs or anything. If we can't recover your data, we'll give you a refund.

Don't be fooled by marketing tactics of the FREE market. You'll be paying it somehow. Its a great way for companies to get you trapped once you start, and it may cost you more later, if you want to leave.

Cost of FREE, can COST YOU MORE!

Check out a related post:

Flat Rate Pricing Explained

The short answer is…nothing at all! Since the USB flash drive came into use about a decade ago, it has became incredibly popular, replacing inferior technologies like floppy disks and Zip drives almost overnight. There’s no denying that everyone loves flash drives. The problem is, we’ve just never been able to agree on a name for these marvelous little contraptions. Though USB flash drive is the most widely adopted nomenclature here in the States, most of Europe has decided to call it a pen drive. Many other titles also persist: Zip drive (actually a misnomer since this refers to those big, square-shaped Iomega branded disks from the late 90s). Thumb drive is also a popular name. Jump drive and usb drive are common as well. Some call it a USB key or key drive. Other names include memory stick, finger stick, data stick, and disk-on-key.

That's 12 names, and I'm probably forgetting a few.

Part of the reason for so many names stems from producers like Kingston, SanDisk, Lexar, Corsair, PNY, Crucial and other flash memory companies seeking to differentiate their USB flash drives from others by coming up with a unique name.

In the end, no matter what we decide to call them, we sure do love these gadgets. That is, until they stop working, become corrupted, break, or get accidentally erased causing us to lose all our important files. Yes, as good and as useful as they are, there is still plenty that can go wrong. Fortunately, FlashDrivePros.com’s flash drive data recovery service exists to rescue your important files should your flash drive break or stop working. We’re also here to help ensure you never lose your files again (or, better yet, prevent it from happening in the first place) with our easy-to-use automatic flash drive backup application.

Questions?

Email us or give us a call!

888.806.6567

support@flashdrivepros.com

Sincerely,

The Flash Drive Pros (Ryan, Cesar, Paul and Kim)

P.S. Tell us what other names have your heard for flash drives and get 25% off FDP Sync!

FlashDrivePros.com is very proud to announce the release of FDP Sync 1.0!

FDP Sync is an automatic flash drive backup application that protects your important files on your flash drive by automatically synchronizing your files with a backup folder on your PC. That way, if your flash drive ever becomes damaged or lost, your files are saved.

We've specifically designed the software for the "technically challenged." (No offense to you non-techies out there.) We've really done our best to make the application extremely easy to set up and use. In fact, once it's set up, it works in the background automatically synchronizing the contents of your flash drive with your hard drive. No more trying to remember to back up your files. And best off all, no more losing your files when your flash drive stops working.

Our goal is not only to offer the best flash drive data recovery service on the planet, but also to prevent you from needing our services in the first place. FDP Sync does just that.

Download your free 14 day trial today. Purchase before July 4th and we'll give you 25% off the already low regular price of $27. Just enter the discount code 25%OFFFDPSYNC when you place your order. 

Download Your Free Trial Here:

http://apps.flashdrivepros.com/FDPSync_Setup_1.0.exe

Buy Here: 

http://flashdrivepros.com/_catalog_107773/Flash_Drive_Applications

As always, your feedback is greatly appreciated!

Sincerely,

The Flash Drive Pros (Ryan, Cesar, Paul and Kim)

We at FlashDrivePros.com get asked all the time if our listed prices are truly "flat rate," or if we are going to raise the price once we have the flash drive in our possession. The answer is that we never, even raise the price for our data recovery services once we receive a flash drive. We believe that having a simple, transparent, flat-rate pricing system gives our customers the peace of mind of knowing exactly how much they will spend before ever sending us their flash drive. The only time we would ever require any additional money would be if we had to order parts, which is rare. So if other companies’ price structures seem confusing, we’re happy to offer one that makes sense, and more importantly, won’t leave you paying several hundred percent more than you expected.

Here are some tips to consider no matter what company you choose to recovery your data:

• Get a full explanation of the cost before you ship - Make sure the rate is clear. If you send your flash drive and get a different rate after it arrives, your only options are to either pay the higher rate or have them return the drive, which can takes weeks from some providers.
  
• Make sure they are reputable - verify testimonials, just because they have worked with big entities or have published "quotes" on their website, does not mean they are the best choice.
• Confusing rate explanation - if the provider makes it confusing by adding tons of explanation on how to quote you, just run! Watch out for the "*" asterisks and read the fine print, if you can find it.
• Don't choose just by price alone - often times we choose the cheapest provider, and end up costing us more down the road. Choose by reputation, reliability and guarantee.
• Yes, Guarantee - is worth repeating. If they can't fix it, you shouldn't have to pay.