Re: Fast pen drive
Speed of the pendrive depends on lot of factors, mostly the computer's USB port you are using. nevertheless Transcend has always backed me up from 2005 onwards (256 MB) still works great. I have many more from many companies and all works the same. To mach current trend you may try out are corsair voyager and verbatim (both are good, keep in mind that you should also check the guarantee conditions too). try to avoid Sony micro vault(Sandisk also, buy only from a reputed dealer if you must have Sandisk) as there are lot of duplicates are in the market. i don't have any new-gen transcend so i can't comment on that.
Earlier times the manufacturers used to provide CD-ROMS with pendrives giving us tools to format the pendrive if there be a need. now to cut costs they have stopped giving anything.
Please note that the write cycle is limited on every flash memory (due to its architecture) when compared to magnetic media(HDD).
Some tips on efficient pendrive operation
1. never leave it running in the PC/LAPTOP without using it, you might have noticed it getting hot. so plug it when you need it. the heat and poser surges can kill it
2. always use safe remove (in windows and Linux too), so that the power supply to the drive is killed before you remove it.
3. if you have to format it use only "quickformat" as a full format writes to every sector.
4. do not expose these to extreme conditions (humidity etc.)
5. please remember the pendrive does not cost much, but your DATA inside is very important so keep one more copy of it.
the companies can give you only a replacement pendrive not your data that you lost with it.