External flash drives are predominantly junk.  You have no idea of what type of memory they're putting in there or the controllers.  Most are woefully slow compared to an SSD and even a spinning hard drive.

External USB thumb drives are fine for transferring data between computers.  They're not at all something I'd trust for backup or long-term storage.

The exception would be external "drives" that use real high quality SSD's internally and either a Thunderbolt or USB 3 (but preferably Thunderbolt) connections.  But those cost a lot more than $9.95.

Arthur Gaer
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Senior Systems Manager 
Harvard University
Department of Mathematics
Science Center
1 Oxford Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
617-495-1610


On Jan 13, 2016, at 3:09 PM, Stewart Gooderman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> From Apple discussion groups:
> 
> External flash drives use USB, which, I believe is much slower.
> 
> DrG
> 
>> On Jan 13, 2016, at 10:07 AM, CJB <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> 
>> Thank you - but aren't flash drives the same as SD cards?
>> 
>> But a 1TB conventional drive seems OK.
>> 
>> CJB
>> 
>> On 13/01/2016, Stewart Gooderman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>> MacBook Pro 13” can be gotten with a 1 TB hard drive.
>>> MacBook Pro 15” can be gotten with a 1TB flash drive.
>>> 
>>> DrG
>>> 
>>>> On Jan 13, 2016, at 9:14 AM, CJB <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> BTW if anyone knows of a brand (not Lenova with in built spyware) that
>>>> offers laptops with proper hard-drives do let me know. As others have
>>>> opined re: SD cards aka solid state 'drives' of limited robistness,
>>>> please let me know.
>>>> 
>>>> CJB.
>>>> 
>>>