Anyone Interested in a full video going over these? Like comparing their performance and thermals to brand name USB drives, figuring out what the little gold pads are connected to, etc.? I really wanna make a video on these but idk if anyone would watch it EDIT: Ok I’ll start working on making the video! 😊
omg it kinda does look like a floppy the way the chip fits almost entirely into the port! Imagine time travelling back to the mid 90s with one of these 😂 “Ladies and Gentlemen, introducing the Rigid Disk”
Yup! That’s why I said they’re hidden in plain sight. I do wonder how the chips preassembled into a USB stick differ from the chips sold in their “raw” form like the ones I showed. They’d have to be Toshiba, Sandisk, etc branded right?
For ergonomics (and skeumorphism) though (and if they haven't already) they should still add the port shell and an extrusion. Think... like a wireless mouse's USB, or a bluetooth/wifi dongle.
@@EnnayXIX How is that a benefit? If it works, anyone can read the data. If it doesn't, not even the owner can. If you want data to be unreadable to others, just encrypt it.
I see you mean, but they’re not microSD cards because there’s no SD Host controller, just flash memory and a USB controller. The same way an SD card is flash memory with an SD controller. I wish there was a camera that used these instead of microSD cards, since microSDs are really fragile
@@KeonsLab They're only fragile if you really man handle them. Only once did I break one and that was on a raspberry pi 4 because the SD card sticks out enough where if you put pressure on it from one of its flat sides, it will snap in two. But really, raspberry pi's are the only sd card slots where it sticks out this much where their fragility is something to worry about. otherwise I think they are plenty strong the way they are. Its not easy to break them in half otherwise.
@@fjl05 breaking them in half is not at all the issue. They just break internally really easily, for example my mom once bought one for her phone, dropped it from ~1m height while unpackaging and after a week or so of usage it stopped working properly
@@commander3494 what? dropping it wouldn't cause it to break over time. These things dont have moving parts or even parts that can break off inside. You're thinking of the old microdrives that where basically tiny versions of the spinning disk drive in a compact package. Those still had moving parts that made them susceptible to breaking when dropped or mishandled. USB drive, SD cards or solid state drives dont have this problem. Im 101% certain your mom's SD card went bad because it was just a badly produced SD card that was bound to fail regardless. I've had the same thing happen with SD cards. They're perfectly fine for a month or so then just die. And I never dropped them. They where just a bad batch.
I started playing with computers in the 1980s. Words like 'gigabyte' were used mostly as theoreticals, as in the total amount of information stored in computer systems GLOBALLY. A 40 megabyte hard drive cost as much as good used car, and you often needed to replace the computer's power supply to handle the additional current needed to run one. I just bought five 64-gigabyte flash drives from Micro Center and spent only about $30. All five TOGETHER can fit in a cigarette pack. The mind reels.
@@Icouldntcomeupwithaname1212 Eh depends on one's needs. Some people have lots of stuff to store going into the dozens or hundreds of gigs. Others have only a few gigs to store, and those help keep the lower storage USB flash drives alive
I remember my first one. It felt like a ton of storage at the time. But the whole thing was smaller than a stick of gum. It has a little cord loop to not lose it... Easily the biggest part was the loop of fabric.
I also think it would be a cool plot point of a movie where someone has to either sneak out data or make it hidden like Snowden or Breaking Bad, where they’d epoxy these overtop of their ram chips or other inconspicuous motherboard chips which look very similar… Then to recover the data they’d scrape off the glue to expose the contacts! That would be so awesome!! (Hopefully it’s not too cliche lol) (P.S: I’m not saying keylogging is good, I’m just saying these have so many out of the box use cases!)
😂 haha nothing lol. I was just watching a documentary on North Korea and how visitors can’t bring in flash drives or something which is when I thought of this. Wouldn’t it be cool though? Like a Liam Neeson type montage of him glueing chips onto circuit boards in a dimly lit room
Tbh normal PCB based USB sticks are quite waterproof as well. My main stick has been theough the washing machine twice and it still works perfectly fine
@@moneybillaThat is true, to an extent at least. Mineral deposits from the water may still damage it if they're left after it's dried, so to be 100% safe you should also make sure to clean it completely from any contaminants before turning it on again.
I've hade one of these nano style USP sticks and ended up losing it in a parking lot, because there where some important files on it I went back the next day to try to look for it. some cars drove over it and cracked the plastic and mangled the metal of the USB plug, but the entire stick was basically this sealed piece of plastic that ended up falling out of the metal housing after cars driving over it in the rain, I plugged it in to my computer to find it working just fine, that was in 2016 and I still use it today
Some others mentioned that too, so I looked up a picture of a Switch cartridge and you’re right, they’re using basically the same concept just with a couple extra pins for console-related stuff.
Try “UDP USB” in google, it’s the only term that works for me since the only info on them is from various Chinese vendor sites, and they use “UDP USB” for their SEO.
Ive had these at home for the better part of 8 years, its quite literally my least favorite usb drive. That are slow and get much more easily damaged then normal usb drives with things like scratches. Maybe the tech has gotten better but the old ones are ass, i only use them to print with my printer or 3d printer because I wouldnt ever put valuable data on it.@@KeonsLab
I once had a 64GB one of these small thingies. Although it didn't break at the solder points, I one day found it to get extremely hot extremely quickly (from room temperature to smellingly hot in half a minute) and not work anymore. When I removed the plastic around it it had a crack through the chip and the only time it got recognized at all by my computer after that was as a non-readable ~0.5KB USB drive. I now have another one of those in the 128GB version which still works great. On USB drives that are the larger form factor they'd most likely only have sustained damage to the USB header soldering points, which could be replaced or in the worst case you could unsolder the flash chip from the PCB to recover the data.
Hopefully everything was backed up! Desoldering the chip for data recovery is also a good point. Also, that’s the first time I’ve seen the word “smellingly” lol, does it mean it got so hot that you could smell the plastic?
True, but there’s also tons of usb sticks that just have a thick plastic shell around the chip, It’s why I really like the metal types like those Kingston drives. These don’t get very hot though since they do make direct contact with the metal walls of the USB port.
Was exactly what I was thinking when I saw it. I have tried some San disk ones that are very small and they get too hot and shut down in the middle of copying files. After they cool off you can get them back on with removal and reinsertion. But if you can't slow the transfer speed then it happens over and over. Rendering the device useless for its intended purpose
@@KeonsLabI've opened so many of the metal USB drives and I'm always disappointed to see that they don't bother to thermally couple the controller to the metal shell. This is the case in even some of the more premium ones.
I got one for a birthday present several years ago. I think it was Verbatim or Sandisk. It was the size a standard sim card (the original size SIM card, not the nano/micro), maybe just over 1cm x 1.5cm? It was incredible. I had it attached to a lanyard but I still ended up losing it, cos it was so small and discrete.
I remember when windows 10 was still new, and since I had built my PC I had to get an installation disk at a store. They had the option for either the Windows 10 USB or just the serial key with a DVD, I chose the second one since I had already made a bootable USB for it, but I actually still have the DVD that came with it! Do you know how much capacity the Windows 10 USB has on it? I’m hoping it’s not just 8GB or something
@@harrison00xXxyou’re aware it’s a usb 3.1 storage device? It’s going to be fast, heat is going to be fairly irrelevant, and it’s still the same thing you’re used to, just all in one. I can’t understand why you’d think it’s any of these.
@@DrakeTain You have never used fast and small SanDisk products of the past few years with in fact USB 3.0 and 3.1. And yes, sadly heat it a problem with those small and tiny USB sticks. In fact even my Sandisk Extreme Pro 3.0 to 3.2 models get very hot even when not reading or writing at all, Give them sustained 200MB/s write or more and they get SUPER HOT. One of the 3.0 models died already (it was abused hard to be honest) and the 3.1 and 3.2 models i even cool additionally with a USB fan when writing a lot of data but they are at least reliable. Keep in mind those have a nice aluminium case and somewhat reasonable good heat dissipation.
@@DrakeTain Also, are you aware about the fact that USB-C is the new standard and USB-A will soon "die"? As nice those tiny usb sticks are, there is no way around going to a dedicated connector part again unless 512GB+ NAND chips get with a factor of like 1:10 smaller than this "USB Stick".
Kingston used to have a metal case USB that was exactly this. Model DTSE9 from what google shows. After about a year the chip broke and all data was unrecoverable.
I’m thinking there may be multiple names for them. Searching “UDP USB” in google works, but so does “monolithic USB” But every article I’ve found so far calls them a USB disk in package (UDP USB).
I don't know if they are available in your country.. but sandisk cruzer blade USB 2.0 version is like this..i know because I opened one.. but i don't like this style as they are really slow
They’re usually sold under the name “UDP USB” the small ones are called “Short UDP”. They’re kinda hard to find but I highly recommend the blue USB 3.0 ones since they fit nicely in all usb ports and are pretty fast. The black and gold USB 2.0 chips are too thin to fit properly into any USB ports without some kind of shell I’ll make a video going over this and other stuff about these soon
@@KeonsLab yeah mine do, but they also came up with the code so you might have gotten a different brand. The Toshiba ones are longer with I'd say a 1:2 aspect ratio
This is insane. I remember being proud as heck when I was 14 for saving up and buying an 8GB iPod. When the 64GB came out, it was unbelievable they could fit it in those bricks we all wanted. It's amazing how far we've advanced, I can't begin to imagine what we'll have in 15 years
Yeah me too, personally I think we’re in the ‘goldilocks zone’ of tech. I honestly wouldn’t mind if tech advancements slowed down a little but on the other hand it really is fun to imagine what could exist in the next few decades
its when you calculate how many books it can fit, thats when stuff like this is absolutely insane. We are so used to throwing around gigabytes and terabytes we forget just how much raw data that is
The smaller UDP “Short” disks (the 3.0 ones) are basically that! When inserted, it looks like a mini ATM card reader (actually kinda cute), with just barely enough sticking out so you can remove it from the port
Omg not again, I just *thought* it might be confusing for some if I said “PC Boards” since for those not familiar with them they might think I was referring to “personal computer boards” (I’m just playing around btw I don’t mind everyone pointing it out)
I use expensive test equipment from UEI and they distribute SW and manuals on these. The drive is attached to, embedded into a business size plastic card and the chip flips out to be inserted into the USB socket. But it takes up so much space, that I have to remove any other devices to fit.
The card takes up space? If it’s just for manuals that might actually be a good thing because its less likely to get lost for future use. You could even put it in a wallet or something just to make sure
actually i like the big long size ones which are made on pcbs, bc they are easier to plug also if the drive is broken its also easier to recover bc its design (tho u shouldnt save important datas on it)
Those have been around for ages, it's just recently that the packaging technology got good enough that they could use decent quality storage for them instead of the really crappy stuff. So now you can get that form factor and it'll actually perform at USB 3.0 speeds instead of USB 1.0...
Every one of these small form factors flash drives that I've used died in a much shorter timespan than the regular ones. The controller and the flash being in a single package causes poor heat dissipation. And as flash storage can be wiped with heat, the data on them gets corrupted a lot more often because the heat of the controller is very close to the flash. I'd also assume data recovery from the small form factor ones is a lot harder since it's all in one chip.
man as a kid i would take apart those usb bracelets and get out the chip and it was literally just a black chip that had USB contacts in the chip, i did also take one apart that had a PCB on it
Mine is over 10 years old. The biggest issue I have with it (outside being ridiculously slow and small capacity) is that, the way they packaged it with a folding cover - it gets really difficult to plug in if you are not directly looking at the port. Not only it folds all the time and you have to support it with half your fingers, but you could plug it in the wrong way or in the wrong type of port (i.e. hdmi). Had to get an usb extension adapter just to avoid the frustration all the time. Turns out, packaging matters alot when it comes to handling convenience. Still working through, but I rarely use it as usb-c ones are now my favourites.
They are! I bet if you went into a store right now and took apart 5 different “average” USB flash drives (not the super cheap 4GB ones), they’d look similar inside!
@@KeonsLab yeah I think these definitely have their place. I think it's a little funny how minute the core components of most storage mediums are - like the tiny PCBs inside the enclosures of 2.5" SSDs
It's quite literally just a PCB with memory. I've used these a lot because I prefer very unstable memory chips to boot literal eWaste computers and utilize them as full time servers. These aren't without merit but they are often shipped as "incomplete" for a reason. They definitely need a sleeve to fit correctly but are otherwise great drives until something serious happens to them. I prefer the 16 and 32GB models as they're the most consistent and can be loaded up with tons of tiny files.
Anyone Interested in a full video going over these? Like comparing their performance and thermals to brand name USB drives, figuring out what the little gold pads are connected to, etc.?
I really wanna make a video on these but idk if anyone would watch it
EDIT: Ok I’ll start working on making the video! 😊
I'd definitely watch it
@@Horshorshorshors awesome!
Yes. I would watch it
yes please
YES PLEASE
Finally, floppy disk 2.0
I mean TOSHIBA made these for a decade, I have many USB drives that when fallen apart have that one integrated monolith
omg it kinda does look like a floppy the way the chip fits almost entirely into the port!
Imagine time travelling back to the mid 90s with one of these 😂 “Ladies and Gentlemen, introducing the Rigid Disk”
Yup! That’s why I said they’re hidden in plain sight. I do wonder how the chips preassembled into a USB stick differ from the chips sold in their “raw” form like the ones I showed.
They’d have to be Toshiba, Sandisk, etc branded right?
💀
For ergonomics (and skeumorphism) though (and if they haven't already) they should still add the port shell and an extrusion. Think... like a wireless mouse's USB, or a bluetooth/wifi dongle.
They're also called "monolithic drives" and they're a bastard to retrieve data from when damaged.
That is arguably one of the greatest benefits
@@EnnayXIX How is that a benefit? If it works, anyone can read the data. If it doesn't, not even the owner can.
If you want data to be unreadable to others, just encrypt it.
Usb drives are not supposed to be used as harddrives they are for short term data that should always be backed up somewhere else
@@thombakker2835 As should hard drives and SSDs! And all other forms of storage.
Yep mine got damaged
it's basically a micro sd card, but with an usb controller and pinout
I see you mean, but they’re not microSD cards because there’s no SD Host controller, just flash memory and a USB controller. The same way an SD card is flash memory with an SD controller.
I wish there was a camera that used these instead of microSD cards, since microSDs are really fragile
@@KeonsLab They're only fragile if you really man handle them. Only once did I break one and that was on a raspberry pi 4 because the SD card sticks out enough where if you put pressure on it from one of its flat sides, it will snap in two. But really, raspberry pi's are the only sd card slots where it sticks out this much where their fragility is something to worry about. otherwise I think they are plenty strong the way they are. Its not easy to break them in half otherwise.
@@fjl05Plus a lot of devices that use micro sd now have trays to hold them in.
@@fjl05 breaking them in half is not at all the issue. They just break internally really easily, for example my mom once bought one for her phone, dropped it from ~1m height while unpackaging and after a week or so of usage it stopped working properly
@@commander3494 what? dropping it wouldn't cause it to break over time. These things dont have moving parts or even parts that can break off inside. You're thinking of the old microdrives that where basically tiny versions of the spinning disk drive in a compact package. Those still had moving parts that made them susceptible to breaking when dropped or mishandled. USB drive, SD cards or solid state drives dont have this problem. Im 101% certain your mom's SD card went bad because it was just a badly produced SD card that was bound to fail regardless. I've had the same thing happen with SD cards. They're perfectly fine for a month or so then just die. And I never dropped them. They where just a bad batch.
I started playing with computers in the 1980s. Words like 'gigabyte' were used mostly as theoreticals, as in the total amount of information stored in computer systems GLOBALLY. A 40 megabyte hard drive cost as much as good used car, and you often needed to replace the computer's power supply to handle the additional current needed to run one.
I just bought five 64-gigabyte flash drives from Micro Center and spent only about $30. All five TOGETHER can fit in a cigarette pack.
The mind reels.
1 terabyte microSD cards
already as 3 years are available
They got 512gb USB sticks now too
tera bytes look so futurstic cant wait for it gbs are extremely expendable nowadays
@@Icouldntcomeupwithaname1212nah i got a 1tb nvme drive for my pc for about 35 bucks
@@Icouldntcomeupwithaname1212 Eh depends on one's needs. Some people have lots of stuff to store going into the dozens or hundreds of gigs. Others have only a few gigs to store, and those help keep the lower storage USB flash drives alive
The biggest issue I've had with these is losing them lol. So. Small.
I remember my first one. It felt like a ton of storage at the time. But the whole thing was smaller than a stick of gum. It has a little cord loop to not lose it... Easily the biggest part was the loop of fabric.
They tend to overheat and die in my experience.
If you ever handled a bunch of micro SD cards or guitar picks before, you know the drill
That's what she said
@@billytaj7708to you only
This would be the best Keylogger usb ever bcs u would not even see it on first sight
I also think it would be a cool plot point of a movie where someone has to either sneak out data or make it hidden like Snowden or Breaking Bad,
where they’d epoxy these overtop of their ram chips or other inconspicuous motherboard chips which look very similar…
Then to recover the data they’d scrape off the glue to expose the contacts!
That would be so awesome!! (Hopefully it’s not too cliche lol)
(P.S: I’m not saying keylogging is good, I’m just saying these have so many out of the box use cases!)
Or just software
What kind of creepy shit is OP up to?
😂 haha nothing lol. I was just watching a documentary on North Korea and how visitors can’t bring in flash drives or something which is when I thought of this. Wouldn’t it be cool though? Like a Liam Neeson type montage of him glueing chips onto circuit boards in a dimly lit room
having seen a few hacker related viedos in passing, my first thought went stright to hiding this in a charging cable or something....
Tbh normal PCB based USB sticks are quite waterproof as well. My main stick has been theough the washing machine twice and it still works perfectly fine
Any device is fine if it gets wet, it's when it's plugged in while it's wet is when shit gets bad
@@moneybillaThat is true, to an extent at least. Mineral deposits from the water may still damage it if they're left after it's dried, so to be 100% safe you should also make sure to clean it completely from any contaminants before turning it on again.
I’ve “accidentally” washed a Sandisk usb drive multiple times, still works today
@@swecreations not water
soap water
Printed Circuit Board boards
ATM machine phenomenon
I was gonna say the same thing
smh my head
@@zafrylaiman8695 At least one youtuber often says "For your FYI"
Chai Tea
I've hade one of these nano style USP sticks and ended up losing it in a parking lot, because there where some important files on it I went back the next day to try to look for it.
some cars drove over it and cracked the plastic and mangled the metal of the USB plug, but the entire stick was basically this sealed piece of plastic that ended up falling out of the metal housing
after cars driving over it in the rain, I plugged it in to my computer to find it working just fine, that was in 2016 and I still use it today
This is also how a lot of Nintendo Switch games are. No PCB, no solder, just the chip with the contacts directly on it.
Some others mentioned that too, so I looked up a picture of a Switch cartridge and you’re right, they’re using basically the same concept just with a couple extra pins for console-related stuff.
PCB boards? Ah yes. The printed circuit board board.
Oooh I want one. Lemme grab some crash from the ATM machine.
Blame RAS Syndrome
Man I love chai tea
Reddit.
smh my head
"usb disk in packaging" turns up zero search results, so either that's not what this is called, or you are the only person who know about it.
This is likely called system in package.
Try “UDP USB” in google, it’s the only term that works for me since the only info on them is from various Chinese vendor sites, and they use “UDP USB” for their SEO.
Sandisk Sells some of them. They are the ones with no cap, and the transparent black plastic swinged hoop at the end.
"Slim mini nano micro usb drive" brings a couple results on amazon
Ive had these at home for the better part of 8 years, its quite literally my least favorite usb drive. That are slow and get much more easily damaged then normal usb drives with things like scratches. Maybe the tech has gotten better but the old ones are ass, i only use them to print with my printer or 3d printer because I wouldnt ever put valuable data on it.@@KeonsLab
Too bad the NAN flash memory used for USB drives tends to be the literal bottom binned flash.
Not A Number? Oh, you mean NAND.
I once had a 64GB one of these small thingies. Although it didn't break at the solder points, I one day found it to get extremely hot extremely quickly (from room temperature to smellingly hot in half a minute) and not work anymore. When I removed the plastic around it it had a crack through the chip and the only time it got recognized at all by my computer after that was as a non-readable ~0.5KB USB drive. I now have another one of those in the 128GB version which still works great.
On USB drives that are the larger form factor they'd most likely only have sustained damage to the USB header soldering points, which could be replaced or in the worst case you could unsolder the flash chip from the PCB to recover the data.
Hopefully everything was backed up! Desoldering the chip for data recovery is also a good point.
Also, that’s the first time I’ve seen the word “smellingly” lol, does it mean it got so hot that you could smell the plastic?
@@KeonsLab
It honestly smelled almost exactly like hot metal but interestingly the plastic didn't deform from the heat.
But it has less surface to dissipate heat.
True, but there’s also tons of usb sticks that just have a thick plastic shell around the chip, It’s why I really like the metal types like those Kingston drives.
These don’t get very hot though since they do make direct contact with the metal walls of the USB port.
Was exactly what I was thinking when I saw it. I have tried some San disk ones that are very small and they get too hot and shut down in the middle of copying files. After they cool off you can get them back on with removal and reinsertion. But if you can't slow the transfer speed then it happens over and over. Rendering the device useless for its intended purpose
They're typically slow drives for that reason. Wether or not that matter really depends on the application.
@@KeonsLabI've opened so many of the metal USB drives and I'm always disappointed to see that they don't bother to thermally couple the controller to the metal shell. This is the case in even some of the more premium ones.
@@KeonsLaba tiny fan and vents would be nice
I got one for a birthday present several years ago. I think it was Verbatim or Sandisk.
It was the size a standard sim card (the original size SIM card, not the nano/micro), maybe just over 1cm x 1.5cm?
It was incredible. I had it attached to a lanyard but I still ended up losing it, cos it was so small and discrete.
Yeah they are quite easy to lose, it’s why I don’t like microSD cards. But hopefully there wasn’t anything important on the one you lost!
The only issue is they are overheating
those tiny ones were used in all official windows 10 install usb's, i pulled mine apart and they are TINY
I remember when windows 10 was still new, and since I had built my PC I had to get an installation disk at a store. They had the option for either the Windows 10 USB or just the serial key with a DVD,
I chose the second one since I had already made a bootable USB for it, but I actually still have the DVD that came with it!
Do you know how much capacity the Windows 10 USB has on it? I’m hoping it’s not just 8GB or something
It looks like a Cyberpunk data shard, I can see Elongated Muskrat installing a 3-slot reader in some guy's neck.
Or Master Chief with two slots, one in his temple on each side, one holds Cortana, one holds Captain Keyes' implant for the self destruct code.
Now just create BadUSB in this package to make it,'s eaven hareder to spot
My phone is a Bad-USB
With no use. And you need a Sizable Cap for that. There are none in that formfactor.
@@peepopalaber Bad-USB (OG Rubberducky) is not USB-Killer.
Talks about literally only a pcb.
"With no PCB"
That 'pcb' is a single chip, with the USB connector embedded into the pads. It's completely integrated
@@mars5train601sounds either slow, unreliable, hot or multiple things of that…
@@harrison00xXxyou’re aware it’s a usb 3.1 storage device? It’s going to be fast, heat is going to be fairly irrelevant, and it’s still the same thing you’re used to, just all in one. I can’t understand why you’d think it’s any of these.
@@DrakeTain You have never used fast and small SanDisk products of the past few years with in fact USB 3.0 and 3.1.
And yes, sadly heat it a problem with those small and tiny USB sticks. In fact even my Sandisk Extreme Pro 3.0 to 3.2 models get very hot even when not reading or writing at all, Give them sustained 200MB/s write or more and they get SUPER HOT.
One of the 3.0 models died already (it was abused hard to be honest) and the 3.1 and 3.2 models i even cool additionally with a USB fan when writing a lot of data but they are at least reliable. Keep in mind those have a nice aluminium case and somewhat reasonable good heat dissipation.
@@DrakeTain Also, are you aware about the fact that USB-C is the new standard and USB-A will soon "die"? As nice those tiny usb sticks are, there is no way around going to a dedicated connector part again unless 512GB+ NAND chips get with a factor of like 1:10 smaller than this "USB Stick".
Remember the times, when the flash drives had a write protection switch?
AND I WISH THEY STILL DID!!! 😡
These are what your company gives you as a “welcome aboard” package and destine you to a cubicle for 40 years.
Whats the name of these, where do you find them, etc etc...?
UDP drive. youll also find them if you google chip usb
@henrikwillamo6287 thank you, finally an answer that makes sense!
Kingston used to have a metal case USB that was exactly this. Model DTSE9 from what google shows. After about a year the chip broke and all data was unrecoverable.
@@logik969 Kingston has fallen off for sure, I've had a usb drive and an ssd fail from them. My friend also had an ssd fail from them.
The USB Disk in Package?
The USB Distant Package?
The USB This is Bagage?
Same here bro. Google knows nothing about any of those.
He's just wrong, it's a UDP drive which is short for USB Drive-in Package.
I’m thinking there may be multiple names for them. Searching “UDP USB” in google works, but so does “monolithic USB”
But every article I’ve found so far calls them a USB disk in package (UDP USB).
@@KeonsLab thanks for the clarification bro.
The old ones have been robustly water proof for decades. Many survived through my laundry: wash and dry.
Have had one that broke on my keys for years. It's just the metal end with the chip encorperated inside. The plastic usb housing was just for looks.
I cannot find them anywhere online, whats the model name?
I don't know if they are available in your country.. but sandisk cruzer blade USB 2.0 version is like this..i know because I opened one.. but i don't like this style as they are really slow
They’re usually sold under the name “UDP USB” the small ones are called “Short UDP”. They’re kinda hard to find but I highly recommend the blue USB 3.0 ones since they fit nicely in all usb ports and are pretty fast.
The black and gold USB 2.0 chips are too thin to fit properly into any USB ports without some kind of shell
I’ll make a video going over this and other stuff about these soon
Toshiba made a LOT of USB 2.0 ones
I wonder if they’d have ‘Toshiba’ etched on the back, since the USB2.0 ones I got have codes that turn up no results when searching them up
@@KeonsLab yeah mine do, but they also came up with the code so you might have gotten a different brand. The Toshiba ones are longer with I'd say a 1:2 aspect ratio
I love how small they are.
I have a 128GB version for my “personal” files.
I must ask… what exactly are these… “personal” files that you have 128GB of 😂 🧐🧐
if you showed this to somebody in the 90s they'd have a heart attack
This is insane. I remember being proud as heck when I was 14 for saving up and buying an 8GB iPod. When the 64GB came out, it was unbelievable they could fit it in those bricks we all wanted. It's amazing how far we've advanced, I can't begin to imagine what we'll have in 15 years
Yeah me too, personally I think we’re in the ‘goldilocks zone’ of tech. I honestly wouldn’t mind if tech advancements slowed down a little but on the other hand it really is fun to imagine what could exist in the next few decades
this form of memory throttle like crazy, good luck sustaining that usb 3.0 speed
Yeah I do agree on that, it can have some wild ups and downs in transfer speed
its when you calculate how many books it can fit, thats when stuff like this is absolutely insane. We are so used to throwing around gigabytes and terabytes we forget just how much raw data that is
I have seen these, crazy how small they can get!
Dude's got the steady hands of shifting sands
Had 2 in high school, they both actually died faster than the older style usb drives which i still use to this day
I have one of these that broke and I opened it and just thought, why was it so big when the electronics are so small
See if they folded that down you could have something that fits entirely inside a standard USB port so you could leave it in a laptop socket.
The smaller UDP “Short” disks (the 3.0 ones) are basically that! When inserted, it looks like a mini ATM card reader (actually kinda cute), with just barely enough sticking out so you can remove it from the port
I used to buy odd usb drives(plastic animals, wood, ect) to take these out.
That’s cool, so you’d get them for the sole purpose of taking out the little chip? Kinda reminds me of myself when I was smaller 😁
@@KeonsLab yes! I love how small they are. I used them for my router as Nas storage. If you don't mind me asking, where can I purchase usb 3.1 minis?
Ah yes, the Printed Circuit Board board.
Omg not again, I just *thought* it might be confusing for some if I said “PC Boards” since for those not familiar with them they might think I was referring to “personal computer boards”
(I’m just playing around btw I don’t mind everyone pointing it out)
That style was the first usb drive I ever owned.
Used to use the Sandisk drives like that to store my files for my school computer.
I've had one for 10 years, still works unlike the other cheap pendrives
Personally id at least appreciate the header, because the shielding is often grounding too
When an SD card and a USB flash drive have a baby:
I use expensive test equipment from UEI and they distribute SW and manuals on these. The drive is attached to, embedded into a business size plastic card and the chip flips out to be inserted into the USB socket. But it takes up so much space, that I have to remove any other devices to fit.
The card takes up space? If it’s just for manuals that might actually be a good thing because its less likely to get lost for future use. You could even put it in a wallet or something just to make sure
Fun fact, they use this exact same form factor on some Nintendo switch game cartridges
Same size too? I don’t have a switch but I kinda wanna get some random cartridge for it to open it up and compare them
Yep, they sell these with a high price naked. You can usually find them in a very small thumbdrive. Another name for these is cob flashdrive.
The way I woke up and saw my job as a cyber security guy get so much harder. On the Lord's Day no less
actually i like the big long size ones which are made on pcbs, bc they are easier to plug also if the drive is broken its also easier to recover bc its design (tho u shouldnt save important datas on it)
This is also how Nintendo Switch cartridges work.
a more disposable and easier to loose usb stick, just what we needed!
Genuinely fascinating. Thanks for posting.
Good thing DIP isn't already used for a component acronym.
Funnily enough I did know this. One of the many things I discovered while tinkering way back when.
That looks like the contact points on a swich cartridge makes ya think
"And it lives *in plain sight*" - literally the hardest to find form factor usb device, both to buy and to spot in person.
Ok, so now do this with USB-C.....
Those have been around for ages, it's just recently that the packaging technology got good enough that they could use decent quality storage for them instead of the really crappy stuff. So now you can get that form factor and it'll actually perform at USB 3.0 speeds instead of USB 1.0...
and when it breaks, there is no recovery possible.
They also can be used in servers for boot disks.
i literally cannot find it under the term "disc in package". i feel like you just made that up
these are the best for laptop with low storage. They are slow BUT useful to have around to get 256gb more of storage while never taking it out.
I love those USB sticks. I made a custom PCB for a USB stick case that is a pixel LED controller, and can be operated by WiFi or IR.
Can't believe these were the size of a large room and now they're smaller than a finger.
I had one of those.
Mine was also a BT connector.
an absolute unit, you could say
Electronics can be made even smaller today! 😱
I have this in my wallet as a spare storage
Those things are always used in small USB sticks. There isn't space for big PCBs so they use those small ones.
good luck getting it out of your usb port lol
It’s actually not that difficult! A little bit of it sticks out like a card reader
Huh, I have a blink system that has an incredibly small flash drive and I always wondered how they squeeze 64 gigs on those, TIL
It's how most small USB dongles are made. The Logitech one being a prime example
They make repair and data restoration so hard though, as you can't pull off the memory chip. I prefer a bga 152/tsop-48 flash drive.
Every one of these small form factors flash drives that I've used died in a much shorter timespan than the regular ones. The controller and the flash being in a single package causes poor heat dissipation. And as flash storage can be wiped with heat, the data on them gets corrupted a lot more often because the heat of the controller is very close to the flash.
I'd also assume data recovery from the small form factor ones is a lot harder since it's all in one chip.
SanDisk ultra 3.0 pendrive already has these USB on package format inside....and one big cons is they heat up pretty quickly after long usage
I just know whats the difference, I have one that I have been using for more than 5 years. Very reliable.
Chips like that are put into charging cables that some people distribute to infiltrate your phone.
That's a NEW development of manufacturing optimization, going from 2 chips to 1 chip, then making the pinout the actual plug .
Yes, this looks very interesting - curious about the upsides and downsides of the form factor.
man as a kid i would take apart those usb bracelets and get out the chip and it was literally just a black chip that had USB contacts in the chip,
i did also take one apart that had a PCB on it
Mine is over 10 years old.
The biggest issue I have with it (outside being ridiculously slow and small capacity) is that, the way they packaged it with a folding cover - it gets really difficult to plug in if you are not directly looking at the port. Not only it folds all the time and you have to support it with half your fingers, but you could plug it in the wrong way or in the wrong type of port (i.e. hdmi).
Had to get an usb extension adapter just to avoid the frustration all the time. Turns out, packaging matters alot when it comes to handling convenience.
Still working through, but I rarely use it as usb-c ones are now my favourites.
I would lose that as soon as i pick it up
Nice. I believe Gen Alpha calls that type of thing a “skill issue”, but I won’t be so mean because I’m a Zoomer, yay!
It's a nano USB stick without enclosure, making it more vulnerable..
if you buy one of those silver and black SanDisk usb drives, they tend to have these little things inside of them instead of a pcb.
Having those for years. The oldest I have is over 10 years old.
Yknow i wasn’t expecting it to have 64 gigs. That’s impressive
I wonder why it isn't more commonly used though. Maybe a lot of cons
They are! I bet if you went into a store right now and took apart 5 different “average” USB flash drives (not the super cheap 4GB ones), they’d look similar inside!
BAH. Had one just like it more than 15 years ago. When it broke, I made a new case for it from an old usb jack. Got me no end of geek cred.
Tiny USB disks seem to get 🔥hot 🔥 though. I wonder how long they compare to some with more surface area.
Walmart hasn't used that brand in years.... 😅
great. now instead of the solder joints failing you crack the NAND flash chip
I guess it could happen, though compared to microSD cards these are a lot sturdier
@@KeonsLab yeah I think these definitely have their place.
I think it's a little funny how minute the core components of most storage mediums are - like the tiny PCBs inside the enclosures of 2.5" SSDs
Wow, an SD card that can fit in USB ports.
I’ve had several of these, they usually look like a dongle
I had one of those, until i lost it.
Cool. It’s small enough and I have been losing my usb drives here and there.
It's quite literally just a PCB with memory. I've used these a lot because I prefer very unstable memory chips to boot literal eWaste computers and utilize them as full time servers. These aren't without merit but they are often shipped as "incomplete" for a reason. They definitely need a sleeve to fit correctly but are otherwise great drives until something serious happens to them. I prefer the 16 and 32GB models as they're the most consistent and can be loaded up with tons of tiny files.
Looks like a switch cart
This guy for sure says ATM machine