Again on the starting of final 12 months, EDN printed my dissection of a yellow-color ADATA UV128 16 GByte USB flash drive that for unknown causes had died on me:
On the time, I additionally confirmed you its blue-tint 8 GByte sibling:
which, once more on the time, I famous was nonetheless working. Properly, it’s nonetheless working…at the least with Home windows-based computer systems, that’s. With MacOS, alternatively, though it nonetheless exhibits up in System Info when inserted in a USB Kind A system connector (both instantly or by way of a USB-C translation adapter middleman):
it doesn’t “mount” in both Finder or Disk Utility, irrespective of how I’ve it formatted (FAT32 or exFAT). This has me wishing that I nonetheless had the remnants of final 12 months’s yellow 16 GByte ADATA drive in hand, too, as a result of I now surprise if the identical O/S fickleness had utilized to it!
Nonetheless, I assumed I’d take this one aside, too, to see if there’s any apparent cause why it’s (O/S-selectively) now not working. I’ll as typical start with some overview pictures, accompanied by a 0.75″ (19.1 mm) diameter U.S. penny for dimension comparability functions (the UV128 has dimensions of two.3” x 0.8 x 0.4”/60 x 20 x 9mm and a weight of 0.4oz/10g):
Concerning the prior pictures’ sometimes-visible USB connector, notice that whereas ADATA’s web site is fast to trumpet the product’s USB 3.x interface capabilities:
USB 3.2 Excessive-Pace Transmission Interface
Now there isn’t a cause to shrink back from the upper price of the USB 3.2 Gen 1 interface. The UV128 USB flash drive brings the comfort and pace of premium USB drives to budget-minded customers.
Solely learn efficiency (“As much as 100 MB/s”) is specified. Initially, post-teardown, I used to be planning on simply writing the next:
“Suffice it to say that, at the least from my anecdotal (i.e., non-analytical) expertise, though the interface switch price could have been 5 Gbps peak, the media switch price seemingly wasn’t, at the least for writes.”
Nevertheless, I then remembered that I had a duplicate of Blackmagic Disk Pace Check on my Home windows system (for which, bear in mind, the USB flash drive was—at the least pre-teardown—nonetheless acknowledged). On a hunch, I plugged the naked PCB into the pc…the USB flash drive nonetheless labored!
Listed below are the benchmark outcomes:
Like I stated, the media switch price isn’t 5 Gbps (and even near it), particularly for writes and even for reads.
Then there’s this:
Ranging from January 1, 2019, the guarantee interval for the UV128 is modified to five years; For UV128s bought earlier than (inclusive) December 31, 2018, the guarantee interval stays unchanged.
What precisely was the guarantee interval previous to January 1, 2019? Who is aware of. I’d purchased three of those gadgets from Newegg in mid-July 2016 promo-priced at $3 every (the 16 GByte siblings had been bought from the identical retailer 11 months later by way of a $5.33-per promotion).
Onward. Let’s get the 2 halves of the case aside:
As was the case final time, the interior meeting then popped proper out of the remaining case prime half:
A bit extra blue plastic left to take away:
The now-revealed pad- and passive-dominant PCB topside (with orientation relative to the place the slider “button” is positioned on the flash drive’s case):
is unsurprisingly paying homage to the one seen earlier in its 16 GByte sibling:
As for the underside facet of this 8 GByte drive:
compared to the sooner 16 GByte counterpart:
I’m as soon as once more unable to establish the producer and product particulars of the flash reminiscence used within the design, which has the next markings:
60074882
5301486066
Nevertheless, I can ID the media controller, which is completely different than the one we noticed final time. The 16 GByte USB flash drive had used Silicon Movement’s SM3267. This time, conversely, it’s the IS917 from Innostor Know-how. My Google analysis on the IS917 reveals one doable root trigger for its incompatibility with MacOS, inside an Amazon overview titled “WARNING be very cautious on non-Home windows gadgets” which particulars a number of examples of unrecoverable media errors ensuing from reformat makes an attempt on each MacOS and Linux. Sadly, the flash reminiscence storage system related to this overview now not exists on Amazon, so I can’t inform if it was the UV128 (or one other ADATA product, for that matter) or one thing from a unique producer.
Since USB Mass Storage specs are standardized these days, I wrestle to know how there might be such vital variances from one working system’s implementation of these specs to a different’s. However, on condition that this USB flash drive, and due to this fact the controller inside it, dates from round a decade in the past (right here’s an IS917 spec sheet with a 2013 copyright, for instance), maybe there’s a never-fixed firmware or silicon bug within the IS917 that non-Home windows working techniques expose (there’s no firmware replace out there for obtain on ADATA’s help website), regardless of the product’s claimed longstanding, intensive O/S help?
Home windows Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10, 11, Mac OS X 10.6 or later, Linux kernel 2.6 or later, with no system driver wanted
Reader concepts are welcomed within the feedback!
—Brian Dipert is the Editor-in-Chief of the Edge AI and Imaginative and prescient Alliance, and a Senior Analyst at BDTI and Editor-in-Chief of InsideDSP, the corporate’s on-line e-newsletter.
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