USB flash drives gaming related expansion solution

[casterofdreams]

Hi everyone.

So I have a question and I wanted to ask the community their thoughts or ideas on this.

Are USB flash drive's an effective means to expand the memory on some of these consoles such as a Wii U or an Xbox 360?

I know in the past flash drives were generally used for back up storage solutions because they would "wear out too quickly" if use for constant read/write applications. Given that it's 2017 is this still the case?

I currently have a 32 GB SanDisk flash drive from the "ultra fit" series. I played The Legend of Zelda Wind Waker on it and there were no studdering or frame rate issues as others have reported based on research that I've done. The boards I've visited were from three years ago.

So in short: given the cost, would it be okay to use a flash drive to use as an option in expanding capacity for consoles such as the Wii U? Will it "wear out" or become a problem in the future?

Thanks in advance.

[Ziggy587]

Nintendo's official answer...

http://en-americas-support.nintendo.com ... nformation

Someone asked this question here: viewtopic.php?p=934841#p934841

Me personally, I wouldn't bother with a USB stick unless I didn't care about losing whatever data would be stored on it. If I HAD to use a stick, I would make sure it was a good quality one rather than whatever cheapo. That said... I'd say just get a HDD. A 1TB WD Elements USB drive can be had off Amazon for $55. It doesn't cost that much more than a quality USB stick, so why bother taking the risk? Those drives are very small, too. Smaller than a BD case. And very quiet.

If you were looking to use a flash stick just because you already had one lying around, well, that's up to you. You're chances of losing data are much greater with it than a HDD.

[Sarge]

If you've already got one, it's not going to hurt it. You're not going to be writing to the flash drive often, and reads are free.

Indeed, there's a chance of data loss, but you've also got that with a hard drive. The long-term retention on a hard drive is better, of course, but it can also catastrophically crash on you. It's not a question of if the hard drive fails, it's when.

Now, if you're buying something, I agree that you might as well buy a hard drive, preferably one that doesn't spin down while in use (a lot of portable hard drives do this). That usually means a drive that plugs up to the wall for its power, as opposed to getting it from the USB port (or ports, as the Wii U often doesn't supply enough juice so you have to use a Y-cable to get it from two).

[isiolia]

With the experiences I have with them, I would personally never use a flash drive as primary storage. I've seen too many of them fail.

HDDs all will fail too, but with more range in how, and often with some degree of recovery possible. SSDs a lot less so, unfortunately, but at least they're designed for frequent I/O. Flash drives aren't.

[casterofdreams]

Interesting information. Both what's that here and from that link. The truth is that I had some flash drives lying around and I had a 64 GB SanDisk that wasn't being used. I figured it would be a complete waste of money (or not even money just a waste of un-utilize space) to spend $55 on a 1 TB hard Drive from Seagate when I'm barely going to fill up 1/10 of that. It would've been cool if I was able to install games onto it like I could with the Xbox 360, but alas this isn't the case.

I guess I'll be somewhat stubborn, roll the dice and see how the flash drive works out.

[theclaw]

Wii U is fussy. Some drives just WON'T work for no immediately discernible reason.
Plug them right into an Xbox 360 or whatnot, and presto!

I have no intent to test Y cables anytime soon.