Best Flash Drives 2024: Fast, Roomy, Pocketable USB Storage | Tom's Hardware

The best flash drives today are much faster and more spacious than they used to be.

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USB flash drives have been the go-to option for decades for those who need local, pocketable access to key files. These tiny drives are still sold nearly everywhere (including at chain drug stores, usually at highly inflated prices), despite companies like DropBox, Microsoft, and Google making cloud storage a convenient and often free alternative (depending on capacity).

But because flash drives often last a decade or more, you could be hanging onto one that’s pitifully slow by today’s standards, and too cramped to hold all the data you need. Capacities of up to 2TB are an option with several models (1TB is pretty common), and the performance of the fastest flash drives approaches that of some of the best external SSDs.

We’ve tested dozens of recent flash drives from leading brands to help find the best options for you, and listed the best USB flash drives below. That said, if fast performance is important to you and you can deal with a device that's just a little bit bigger, an external SSD is probably a better buy. And if you have a spare M.2 SSD from upgrading a laptop or desktop, you can save some money by building your own external SSD.

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Our expert review:

Just like its roomier 1TB variant, the 256GB Kingston DataTraveler Max is a speed demon in the flash drive world. At $30-$35, Kingston’s 256GB drive is a great balance of speed, affordability and capacity for those who don’t want to spend much more on a roomier, somewhat faster alternative.Available with either a USB-C or USB-A connector , the 256GB DataTraveler Max performed nearly as well as its more spacious 1TB sibling in our PCMark, DiskBench, and CrystalDiskMark tests, making it the second-fastest flash drive we’ve tested (third if you count the 1TB Kingston drive as competition). And it’s also fairly slim, making it easy to slip into a pocket.Just note that, if you’re a desktop user and you opt for the model with the USB-C port, you will likely have problems plugging the drive into rear USB-C ports on the motherboard. Thanks to the two-piece plastic slide mechanism that protects the drive’s port when not in use, the USB-C connector is slightly too short to plug into most motherboards successfully. I tried this with three boards I have on hand and had the same issue with each. But, if your PC case has a front USB-C port or you’re using a laptop, this shouldn’t be an issue. I only had this problem with rear motherboard ports and this drive.

Our expert review:

The line between flash drives and external SSDs is increasingly indistinct, and SK hynix's Tube T31 blurs it even more, by putting an actual M.2 drive on a small PCB and shoving it into a somewhat bulky but surprisingly speedy flash drive form factor. Capacity is limited to just 512GB and 1TB models, but this is the fastest "SSD stick" we've tested yet, surpassing Transcend's ESD310C and Kingston's DataTraveler Max drives on most of our tests. Priced at $85-$90 when we wrote this, it's also slightly more affordable than those drives at the 1TB capacity.If you're after a simple portable drive and don't need 20 Gbps speeds or a capacity higher than 1TB, it's a great choice. Its bulk might get in the way of nearby ports on a desktop or hub. But on a laptop, the USB-A port (if you still have one) is likely set apart from other USB ports. And on a desktop, you probably have several USB-A ports to choose from, unlike USB-C.Read: SK hynix Tube T31 Review

Our expert review:

Much like the SK hynix Tube T31 drive (which is generally slightly faster in testing but also larger) Adata's SC750 blurs the line between flash drive and SSD, by essentially putting a retractable USB port on a small SSD inside a plastic housing, making for a compact flash drive that beats nearly every competing drive that doesn't require an external cable. In our testing, the 10Gbps-rated Adata SC750 beat the Tube T31 in PCMark 10, came in second in reads in our 10GB DiskBench read test, and was faster than the hynix drive in writes. Adata's drive didn't look quite as good in our CrystalDiskMark results, but overall it's generally the second-fastest drive we've tested in this category. And unlike the Tube T31, it uses USB-C rather than the older USB-A port. So if you want to plug your drive into a phone or you have a laptop with only USB-C ports, it should be at the top of your list for convenient and speedy external storage. In terms of price, the ADATA SC750 may cost slihgtly more or slightly less than SK hynix's drive, depending on whether the latter is on sale. But given the similar performance and what generally seems to be about a $10 price difference between the two drives, if you're considering both drives, you should probably make your choice based on which port (USB-C for Adata, USB-C for SK hynix) is the most convenient for your use cases. Read: Adata SC750 review

Our expert review:

If you're after a drive that's small enough to leave plugged into your laptop most of the time, or you just want something you can clip to your keychain and forget about until you need it, Samsung's FIT Plus stands out. The 128GB model we tested sells for $18, and when we wrote this the top-capacity 256GB model was selling for just $25 direct from Samsung. At less than an inch long including its USB-A connector, it will stick out of your port less than an inch when plugged in. And it has a hole for a lanyard, it feels solid – in fact, this sub-$20 drive feels better than the most expensive drives on our list. And Samsung says it's rated to survive in up to 1 meter of water for 72 hours. In case it doesn't, the company covers the drive with a generous five-year warranty.That being said, our testing shows this tiny drive is in a much lower performance class than the bigger, pricier, roomier models. On our real-world DiskBench 10GB test, the Samsung Fit Plus read our files at a decent 319.7 MB/s, but could only write at 58.4 MB/s. That's just over half the read speed and less than 15% of the write speed of Kingston's 1TB DataTraveler Max. That said, the Samsung drive's performance was still significantly better than most of the drives we tested with capacities less than 1TB. SanDisk's Extreme Pro 128GB wrote our test files about twice as fast, but it costs nearly 2.5 times as much and is more than six times longer.

Our expert review:

There are loads of insanely cheap no-name 2TB flash drives available on Amazon and sites like Aliexpress if you like throwing your money at scammy garbage tech – but the 2TB Buffalo SSD-PUT is real and (at $160 when we wrote this) a surprisingly good deal. It's cheaper than most larger 2TB external SSDs (although some of those will definitely be faster), and significantly smaller (although still bulky for a flash drive). Overall, this drive did slightly better on our benchmarks than its 1TB sibling, meaning it doesn't beat or often quite match the Kingston DataTraveler Max. But for the price -- and especially considering it's one of a very few 2TB drives available from a known brand, this is a very impressive performer.On the minus side, the drive has the same creaky, cheap-feeling plastic shell as the 1TB model, and it's nearly an inch wide, making it a tight fit on some laptops where the ports are placed close together. But you get a roomy 2TB of pocket-friendly storage at fast speeds (for a flash drive), and a bundled USB-C adapter should your device not have a USB-A port handy. If Buffalo would just release this drive in solid-feeling metal housing (or even a solid-feeling plastic one), this would arguably be the perfect flash drive for those who need lots of storage in their pocket.

One thing to keep in mind when shopping is what type of ports you'll be plugging your flash drive into. Some drives are offered with either a USB-A connector or USB-C, and some come with adapters to convert from USB-A to USB-C or vice versa. A few drives have both connectors on the same drive, which is certainly more convenient than having to keep track of an adapter and have it with you every time you need it. All of the faster flash drives we've tested have a single Type-A or Type-C connector. Also, note that drives that promise speeds of 500 MB/s or more use USB 3.x Gen 2 (10 Gbps) ports. That means if you're plugging those drives into a USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen1 (5Gbps) port (those are still far more common than the faster Gen 2 ports), performance won't be as fast as it could be.

Still, the performance differences between the lower-cost, lower-performing drives in our testing and the higher-performing 1 or 2TB drives that top our test results are at times nearly a factor of 10, especially when it comes to write speeds. So even when you plug one of the fastest drives into a slower 5Gbps port, you should get much better performance than you would if using an older or cheap sub-$20 flash drive.

Companies like SK hynix and Adata (and likely others soon) have blurred the line between the traditional flash drive and an external SSD. The Tube T31 and Adata SC750 (both picks on our list above), house actual solid-state drives inside, just like an internal NVMe SSD, with a USB port stuck on one end and a plastic shell. These kinds of drives tend to be faster than other flash drives, which is nice. But they also tend to be much wider than more traditional flash drives, like Kingston's DataTraveler Max. That means these "stick SSDs" as they are sometimes called, often block adjacent ports. And if you're using a laptop that perhaps only has two ports, that can be a significant issue. Of course, some "true" flash drives tend to be wide as well, like Buffalo's SSD-PUT. So keep any necessary port clearance in mind when you're shopping for a new drive. You could have the fastest drive available, but if it forces you to unplug your power cable or mouse every time you want to use it, you may want to consider something smaller and a little slower.

We ran our benchmark tests on a custom desktop running Windows 10 Pro on an AMD Ryzen 7 3700X CPU and a Gigabyte X570 Aorus Master motherboard with 16GB of RAM and an older (but still speedy) Samsung 960 Pro boot drive. We also spot-checked our first few drives on a newer system using a Ryzen 5 5600X CPU and a much faster PCIe 4.0 Corsair MP600 Pro XT boot drive. But because none of these drives even get close to the bandwidth limitation of PCIe 3.0, there was no discernable performance differences between the two test systems.

All of our benchmark testing was done with drives plugged into the system's rear USB 3.1 Gen 2/ USB 3.2 (10 Gbps) ports. The Aorus board we used has one Type-C and one Type-A port rated for these speeds, so we were able to accommodate drives with both types of connectors.To get a sense of how these flash drives compare to a larger (though still usually pocketable) external SSD, we also ran our flash drive tests on the Mushkin's CarbonX, a 1TB External SSD that's rated to similar speeds as the fastest flash drives, or "Up to 1,000 MBps." This drive is no longer widely available, but you can expect similar performance from some of the more affordable options on our Best External SSDs list.

Given the falling prices of external SSDs and their general ability to perform better on longer-duration workloads (and particularly small file writes, which we'll see shortly in testing) an external SSD is often a better option if you are going to frequently be moving large amounts of files on and off your drive, and especially if you plan to run programs from your portable storage device. The larger surface area and improved controllers and components of external SSDs tend to be better at those kinds of tasks, though there are of course noticeable performance differences in that product category as well.

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices.

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test real-world file transfer performance with a custom 50GB dataset. We copy 4,617 files (images, videos, and software ISO files) to a folder on the test drive (write). Then, after leaving the system idle for five minutes, we run the same test in reverse, moving the test folder to a different location on our PCIe 4.0 testing drive.

Round two of our benchmarks sees the SK hynix drive rocket to the top in real-world read performance, about 135-142 MB/s faster than its closest competitors. And only Silicon Power's DS72 was faster on writes. This is a great showing for the SK hynix drive.

CrystalDiskMark (CDM) is a free and easy-to-run storage benchmarking tool that SSD companies commonly use to assign product performance specifications. It gives us insight into how each device handles different file sizes. We run this test at its default settings.

If you've used a flash drive in the past and written lots of data on it, there's a good chance you've grabbed it to yank it out when you're done and winced at the hot – or at the very least surprisingly warm – exterior. We've certainly dealt with uncomfortably toasty drives before, but perhaps that's becoming an issue of the past.

None of the drives we tested felt hot to the touch after testing. And we used an IR thermometer to check the temperature of several during a long 100GB write test. After several minutes of sustained writing, the Transcend and PNY drives got the warmest, but were still under 94 degrees Fahrenheit. The solid-feeling metal-clad Orico drive got up to just 83.4 degrees, and the similarly solid OWC Envoy Pro Mini remained the coolest, at just 78.5 degrees Fahrenheit. The tiny Samsung Fit Plus, which barely has any surface area compared to the other drives, topped out at 82.1 degrees in our testing. Doubtlessly the Samsung drive is helped here by the fact that it writes much more slowly than many of the larger drives.

Team Group X1 Max (1TB): This dual-port (USB-A on one end, USB-C on the other) flash drive nearly made our best flash drive list, thanks to its design and performance. It's among the fastest drives we've tested, but can't beat the SK hynix Tube T31. And that's a problem when the 1TB Tube T31 is often on sale for considerably less than the 1TB X1 Max we tested ($82 as of this writing).The Team Group X1 Max is worth considering if you need both USB-C and USB-A ports on your drive for moving between machines, as the Tube T31 is only available with a USB-A drive and the similarly speedy Kingston DataTraveler Max comes with either a USB-A or a USB-C port, but not both on the same drive. That said, as is often the case with flash drives with completely removable caps, those on the X1 Max don't feel particularly secure when they are installed, so I worry how well they'll hold up over months and years of use. Plus, they're tiny and easy to lose while you're using the drive, even if they never fall off accidentally.

Silicon Power MS70 (1TB) and DS72 (1TB): These two drives from Silicon Power perform roughly the same and have similarly solid-feeling shells and flip-up caps. The DS72 has a USB-C connector on one and and USB-A on the other, while the MS70 makes do with just USB-A.

The Silicon Power drives also perform fairly well overall, but were inconsistent on our tests. In Crystal Diskmark's sequential tests, they were the best flash drives we've tested yet, and they were also among the best on our 10GB DiskBench test. But on the PCMark 10 Data Drive benchmark, they consistently delivered scores that were roughly half of what the Transcend and Kingston drives we tested and they weren't particularly impressive in our 4K test, either.Pricing for the 1TB models that we tested was also in an awkward middle area, between our favorite mainstream drive from Buffalo and the better-performing options from Transcend and Kingston. Still, if the price drops by $10-$20, these would be good options, particularly if you mostly want a drive to move files from one place to another rather than to run programs from, directly. Their physical design and build quality feels better than some of the more expensive options out there.

We tested more than a dozen drives for this list in the quest to find the best flash drives, and will be adding more in the near future. Many of the lower-capacity, lower-priced drives performed poorly overall, proving the adage "you get what you pay for." However, some expensive 1TB drives suffered from disappointing performance in some benchmarks, proving you don't always get a great drive even if you're willing to spend close to $100. Below are some of the drives that stood out but didn't make the list.

Orico USSD-X (512GB): Orico's latest flash drive is wrapped completely in metal, and feels surprisingly solid in your hand. And supposedly it will be offered in several colors. Its performance in our testing hovered between middle of the pack and near the top, excelling in our PCMark and Diskbench tests, especially. That said, its performance didn't stand above the rest in any single test, and at the time of testing, we couldn't find it for sale in the US. Hopefully, the company improves its supply issues, because this USB-A drive feels better to hold and use than arguably any other flash drive we've tested. And its performance is quite solid. We just need to know how much it will cost.OWC Envoy Pro Mini (1TB): This drive was the second-fastest overall and sports a solid metal shell. But its design is overly complicated, as is its setup process (which forces you to agree to a EULA which, when we wrote this, was still 404ing). Really though, the primary problem with OWC's drive is price. At $149 for the most spacious 1TB model, it's nearly as expensive as the 2TB Buffalo drive. And often the Buffalo drive goes on sale for less.

Patriot Supersonic Rage Prime (1TB): With a name this obnoxiously aggressive (and $90 price to match), we were expecting impressive things from Patriot's top-end flash drive. And it did quite well in some tests, but struggled on our 10GB file transfer test, managing to write at just 91.7 MB/s–behind all but the lower-capacity, much lower-priced drives on this list.PNY Pro Elite (1TB): We like the solid metal shell of this PNY drive, but its $130 asking price is higher than any other 1TB drive we've tested. And it struggled on our 10GB write test, managing just 96.9 MB/s, which was slower than even Samsung's 256GB Duo Plus drive. There isn't much that's pro or elite about that.Orico UFSD-C (1TB): This metal-clad USB-C drive looks and feels great and performed quite well overall, though its benchmark results didn't stand out in any real way. Its main issue is availability. The company sent us the 1TB model we asked for, but it doesn't seem to be for sale anywhere in the US. You can order it on Aliexpress, but even there it's only available at up to 512GB, and its $82 current price is close to what we'd expect the 1TB model to sell for.Samsung USB-Type-C (‎128GB): One of Samsung's newer drives, this model sports solely a USB-C connector and isn't much bigger than the USB-A Fit Plus drive. But it's slightly more expensive than the Fit drive and had a tendency to land near the bottom of our tested Samsung drives in terms of performance. If you need USB-C and don't need a lot of speed (and particularly write speed) and capacity (it tops out at 256GB), this isn't a bad drive. It just doesn't stand out in any substantive way. And we wish its write speed were at least twice as fast as the 59-67 MB/s we saw in our sequential tests. Read speeds were, at least, much faster at more than 300 MB/s.

SanDisk Extreme Pro (128GB): While SanDisk's high-end drive performed well compared to other 128GB models, its $43 price at that capacity is about 2.5x that of Samsung's Fit Plus. And while it is available in up to 1TB capacities, the most spacious model sells for between $130 and $200, making it much more expensive than competing drives.SanDisk Ultra (256GB): SanDisk's plastic-clad Ultra drive is exactly the kind of thing you'll see drastically overpriced at your local pharmacy or big-box store. Online, it seems fairly reasonable at about $20. But Samsung's Fit Plus is much smaller, performed better in most of our tests, and can be found for $5-10 more in the 256GB capacity.

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After a rough start with the Mattel Aquarius as a child, Matt built his first PC in the late 1990s and ventured into mild PC modding in the early 2000s. He’s spent the last 15 years covering emerging technology for Smithsonian, Popular Science, and Consumer Reports, while testing components and PCs for Computer Shopper, PCMag and Digital Trends.

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