Jan "Jenkings" Škoda - blog

I have mentioned almost everywhere, that i am running out of USB drives. The events and fairs no longers offers free promo drives so often, and sometimes, some drives becomes dead.

With the introduction of cloud storage, the need for USB drives decreased and fewer people use them nowadays. So I have kindly asked some communities for USB drives, offering them the 'ecological benefit' of using them instead of throwing them away.

The first two drives arrived recently, one of which was this one.



It came with a loose and broken USB connector, so I had to wire it to the PCB wire by wire and then fix it to the board using the ground 'legs'. It works, which is fine, but what's funny is the storage: it's actually a MicroSD card soldered to the PCB, with a control microprocessor that gives access to it and shows it as a USB drive.

And I still have no idea why they did that. Especially why it is soldered so askew! The reason for using a card instead of SMD storage is driving me mad.

Based on practical tests, I do not understand this solution. The same storage on a chip soldered to the board can last many times longer than an equivalent microSD card.

However, I'm really glad I have a few more USB drives to use, so I won't complain.