$180 for a dubious SSD drive? Maybe pass on USB Club • The Register

Imagine that your USB flash drive came with software that lets an unknown cloud platform scan its contents and upload files, inform your friends about whatever you publish, and then them download your stuff for themselves.

Got that picture in your head? Then you've just imagined the concept behind USB Club and the $180, 1TB SSD "Transport" drive it made available yesterday.

There's little in the way of specs to justify Transport's $180 price tag, with the only figure given on USB Club's website a mention of being able to transfer "5GBs in 15sec," equaling about 341 MB/s. That means the drive appears to offer speeds similar to USB 3.0 - nowhere near justifying paying state-of-the-art prices for it.

The Transport is also really small, and cased in plastic. As anyone who's used an external SSD knows, they can run quite hot and it's not apparent what sort of thermal management is built into the keychain-sized object. Despite USB Club's claims, this is a pint-sized SSD; we suspect it's really just a regular old flash drive.

That hasn't stopped interested buyers, who've apparently run through several batches of the things, though it's not clear how many were in each batch. A screenshot from the order page shared yesterday showed that there were 8 items remaining in Batch 2; as of writing, Batch 5 is now on sale, and the site shows eight items in that batch as well.

The exclusivity of gaining access to some mysterious cloud sharing platform appears to be where the bulk of the selling price for the Transport comes from as it, and the $40, 128GB USB Club Classic, are the only way to get an invitation to the actual USB Club.

As is the case with the hardware, the software isn't well explained, either.

USB Club's website mentions the availability of macOS and iOS-exclusive apps, but aside from a single screenshot, that's all the information offered. For more we had to turn to a video posted to X of a talk USB Club founders Yatú Espinosa and Norm O'Hagan gave earlier this month at an event hosted by incubator South Park Commons, but that's light on details, too.

According to the video, the USB Club macOS app allows users to share files, one at a time, to a social media-like feed where uploaded files appear alongside those from friends. Users have a profile too, so discovering new people with new files appears relatively simple.

What's less apparent is what the app accesses on an individual's device or how user safety is ensured.

In the video, Espinosa said that the app scans uploaded files for malware, while noting the device is "making a copy of my USB," so it's entirely unclear what's being scanned or uploaded. Likewise, anyone who wants to view a file someone else uploaded is prompted to "Preserve to USB," suggesting users have to directly download content to see it, opening up a data goldmine for anyone smart enough to sidestep antivirus software.

Espinosa noted in an interview earlier this year that the original intent of the app was to only allow users to share a single file per day, and everything disappears at midnight. It's not clear whether either is still the case.

Along with a lack of detail on the software itself, it's entirely unclear whether USB Club has content controls to prevent the sharing of illegal or objectionable material with others, whether the software the startup is using was developed in-house (both Espinosa and O'Hagan have development experience, but the outfit is looking for a backend and iOS engineer) or is wrapped third-party software, or where the USB drives themselves were sourced from.

We reached out with lots of questions, but haven't heard back.

Many of today's young adults grew up without much physical media, which is why many have embraced older forms of technology, the ownership they confer and the intimacy of having to directly connect with another human to get new stuff.

CD revenues, for example, are actually rising in 2024 while digital download purchases are declining. Streaming still dominates, of course, but more people are interested in owning their own copies of music in case Spotify or Apple Music loses a deal and albums vanish.

The USB drive is sort of an intermediary between the demise of physical ownership and the CD, in a sense, and it's that ethos that USB Club is trying to channel when it started as a thing to do at parties Espinosa was DJing in New York City.

Using a device Espinosa would take to events known as the "Automatic Transfer Machine," the device allowed users to connect and upload files to be shared in one big chunk with anyone else who connected a drive, allowing event hosts to "create a unique distribution channel to curate files for their audience so they have something to walk away with after attending an event in real life."

From there, the commercialized USB Club was born, with little in the way of visible privacy and security assurances, but a shiny, overpriced piece of hardware and the promise of being a member of an exclusive online community to entice buyers.

We know you can't get an invite to the exclusive USB Club by buying any old external USB-C compatible SSD drive, but you could pay less for one with double the storage space and faster transfer speeds. If you still want the social aspect, you could then set up a shared Google Drive folder, or mutual iCloud space if you want to maintain platform exclusivity, and use some free synchronization software to keep your USB drive and the cloud in agreement.

That wouldn't be reinventing the wheel with added security concerns, though, so never mind. ®

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