“Was that stupid?” – A Reddit user has built what is probably the largest “USB stick” of all time

An inventive Reddit user doesn’t want to spend money on cloud storage. But his homemade replacement comes with some risks.

What did the Reddit user build? Key_Sundae61 wants to have storage space outside of his actual computer, which is also somewhat portable. But classic USB sticks with a few GB are apparently not enough for him – and paying for cloud storage year after year is too expensive for him.

He probably needs several terabytes (TB), so he built something himself for a similar price of 120 euros: an 8TB hard drive connected externally via a dock, so 8,000 gigabytes or about 80,000 megabytes.

A system like this from Orico is used, connected to the system via USB. However, he is not entirely sure about the idea itself, so he turned to Reddit to ask whether the idea was “rather stupid”. There are a lot of reactions there – and a lot of questions.

By the way, classic USB sticks are an essential part of many articles on MeinMMO, for example in the following video or in this story about a data storage device found on the train, which seems mysterious, even dangerous, but ultimately very disappointing.

An idea with many weaknesses

The Reddit post about the quasi-USB stick quickly garnered comments, but above all, obvious frowns. They questioned its intention and predicted a grim fate for the data, for example:

Do you really want to use this as mobile storage? […] If so, data loss is virtually unavoidable with your idea, it’s just a question of when and not if.

AllMyFrendsArePixels

Comparing the design with cloud storage suggests that at least a certain level of data availability outside of the living room is intended. And that is precisely what raises questions across the board.

Why is an HDD a poor choice for mobile storage? The main difference between an HDD and an SSD and a USB stick is its structure. In an HDD, disks rotate at high speed around a central axis. This is why HDDs should not be moved once they are switched on. There is a risk that the read and write heads will hit the disks and cause damage – or even failure.

When switched off, the risk is much lower, but even then, transport is not planned by the manufacturer, especially with hard drives that are described as being for internal use. Nothing moves in an SSD or USB stick. Everything runs purely electrically. They are far better storage for on the go, but they do not offer this immense size at a very reasonable price of around 120 euros (without dock). They cost more like 550, see here at Amazon.

What’s great about a cloud? You can access your data from anywhere via the Internet – and you don’t carry it around with you physically where it can be stolen. However, you could be hacked because your data is theoretically available digitally online to anyone who has the login details.

But in a cloud, data can also get lost, right? Theoretically yes, a cloud is only as reliable as the provider. But the chance that giants like Google, Apple or Microsoft will destroy their storage or suddenly stop offering it is almost zero. The end of life of an HDD, especially as a mobile storage device, is to be expected much sooner.

And what if he only wants to use the storage at home? If it is used purely locally, the setup would be fine. However, HDDs always have a certain probability of failure. So the data should be saved somewhere else as a backup.

Does the thread creator answer the questions? No, unfortunately neither we nor the advisors on Reddit will receive a response – at least until noon on August 7, 2024.

Some YouTubers have proven to be more talented at making constructs that are probably just as dubious. They used the suits of the desert dwellers from Dune as a template for a special kind of experiment. In the following article, we present the nevertheless remarkable result: The desert suits from Dune sound far too good to work – fans have built one and are surprised.