I've pretty much stopped using 'stick' type storage for anything >256MB, as regardless of brand and series, my experience is that these thingies overheat under anything but light write usage, and either slow to a crawl or drop off the USB bus entirely before my copy is finished.
'Credit card' sized SSDs are not that much more inconvenient to carry and store, and don't exhibit any of these issues for me.
And the thermals on these things must be horrible, plus the label makes it look like a knock-off: Sandirk?
NVMe enclosure are cheap, mine is a ugreen supporting usb 3.2 gen2 and i paid less than 20 euro. Put any kind of half decent nvme in it covered by one of those cheap heat dissipator.
I've always wondered about why those little gadgets don't come with metal encasings bonded to the chip with a thermal pad, or putty out of the factory. Be it brushed aluminum, copper, or another alloy. Brushed, anodized, or with fins for 'heavy duty (outdoor/industrial?)' use(which you could clean with a brush, if need be).
There should be a market/demand for that, when people are paying fantasy prices for gamified crap, yes?
The most irritating thing about the credit-card sized ones, are how they aren’t attached if you move around.
I like to be mobile, so I put some velcro ultra-mate on the back of my laptop, and also on my disk, then the disk can be attached and plugged in while I move around.
I also got a 90-degree USB-C cable for a more direct cable route.
I just upgraded the internal storage of my Lenovo T14 (AMD, Gen6) to 4TB, and that took all of 5 minutes. And that laptop was definitely made in 2025, although I agree that consumer sentiment overwhelmingly favors models that are less convenient in that respect.
Not really an issue outside the Apple ecosystem and a few fringe tablet hybrids like from Microsoft. Vast majority of laptops sold today have standard SSDs you can upgrade.
> Vast majority of laptops sold today have standard SSDs you can upgrade.
Though some make it quite difficult to get in to replace the drive, and put everything back together after.
Some are very easy: an obvious compartment at the bottom, unscrew lid, remove drive, put in replacement, power up and transfer old content, done. I've seen both NVMe and 2.5" SATA drives arranged this way. On the other hand, upgrading my friend's laptop recently involved taking most of it apart, the drive was under the keyboard inaccessible from the back, with other link cables (for keyboard, antenna, screen) in the way so they had to be disconnected and were in very inconvenient arrangements for reconnecting after…
These days most of them seem to work just fine on Linux, Windows, and Mac. I use several brands across all 3 and never had an issue. I like the DOCKCASE Visual Smart ($40) or Explorer Edition ($50). They have large capacitors to provide 10 seconds of power loss protection, support 10Gbps USB speeds, and have a second USB port just for power which makes it compatible with SSD's that draw a lot of power. I like the info on the little screens because I swap SSD's in/out frequently. There are cheaper ones that work fine too - the "SABRENT USB 3.2 Type-C Tool-Free Enclosure" ($30) is nice for, well, not needing a screwdriver to swap out the drive - but it might not deliver enough power for some overkill SSD like the (now Sandisk) WD Black SN8100 - but the DockCase will, as long as you also plug in an auxiliary power USB cable.
A drive like the Patriot Memory P400 Lite is very low power, so it works with cheaper enclosures or USB ports that don't deliver as much power to the peripheral. It also generates less heat, which can help sustain performance depending on the enclosure and environment.
I have experience with ext4 not through deliberate choice but through circumstance.
ext4 can't be natively mounted in Mac and Windows but you can install third party software and still mount it from the command line easily. And of course ext4 works fine with Linux natively.
I don't know if you can install the Mac OS or Windows OS on an ext4 drive and directly boot from it, however.
When you say Linux, reliability depends on distro. I had tried to install Mint on an external harddrive, and the stupid installer modified the boot loader to search for Grub on the removable disk. No removable disk, no grub, no booting of any OS. Idiotic. Lets not get started on the repair/recovery process since another mainstream OS recovery tools wont mount Fat32 EFI partition in R/W, needed to verify the uuid for bootmanager.exe - long story short, had to reinstall everything. Note - neither Windows or Linux are on that box anymore, but Haiku and OSX works brilliantly.
I am begining to dislike mint, that I incidentaly downoaded via mobile data onto an old hinky android phone, then put on a usb drive with a usb/c adapter, with "etchDroid", and booted an ancient desk top with.
The phone I have now, has a sim tray with places for 2 SIM's and an SD card, so with one of these 1TB, USB-C drives and a 1 TB SD card, it should be possible to carry a local copy of OSM, and a copy of wikipedia(text only) with plenty of room left, the full wiki is a monsterous 410 TB
I have to admit I still don't really know what thunderbolt even is. I think it's something that is done over USB-C, and requires hardware support on the CPU.
I'm guessing it's one search query + a one minute read away though. I just haven't.
I have two SSK USB sticks that give me write speeds of up to 1GB/s (as long as they're not filled to the brim). I've copied things like 80GB games in something like 2-3 minutes. A real SSD will always be best, but I'm pretty happy with these USB sticks.
The USB sticks you talk about are basically USB SSDs, not what we know as traditional thumb drives.
I have a similar one too from HP(PNY), and it's crazy fast for its size, but the issue is its controller (ASMedia IIRC) reports it to the OS as a UAS (USB Attached SCSI), similar to an external HDD, instead of Removable Mass Storage as most thumb drives do, so you can't hot -plug/-unplug it, and that controller seems to be backlisted by the Linux kernel for some reason, so it's not recognized on linux unless I fiddle with the "options usb-storage quirks" kernel parameters, but even so my BIOS can't detect it to boot from it. From what I understand the issue causing all this is that it's a native 4K-block device causing issues with booting on it as typically 512-byte block native devices are required for EFI boot, or at least that have 512-byte emulation support which this controller does not.
I am so disappointed because I bought a fast USB SSD to install and dual boot Linux on it as a second drive for my Windows laptop. If only I knew that there's such a big difference in the types of USB drives out there and that they're not all remotely the same.
So do your due diligence on linux compatibility, if you ever want to buy these USB SSDs.
Thanks I already switched to a SATA SSD with USB3.0 adapter that works for booting Linux, I'm just annoyed spending the money on a fast pricy USB drive that doesn't work for anything else than Windows file transfers because of some BS technicality.
Tiny form factor USB drives have been around for ages¹ but only for USB-A ports, so I assume the news here is the USB-C connector (and the availability of capacity over 256Gb). This would be nice, I've been looking for something small that will go in a C port without an adaptor that stops it being so tiny any more, but the shape of these looks like it would irritate me, sitting “high” above the port and likely above the device it is plugged into.
The closest I've found are minimal size dual-port things like https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0B5S29JWY/ but they could be half the length (when inserted) without the A connector at all. I have no portable devices without at least as many C ports as A's, non-portable devices with only A ports I can stick a C-in-A adaptor or two semi-permanently into.
I want one that is shaped like the USB-C port. Like it was extruded from the port. About as long as a key, maybe a shorter key, like a mailbox key. Has a rounded end with a hole to make a very sturdy keyring hole. Capacity is limited to what would be reliable and not overheat. <1g.
I also wonder if the HDMI port in the stock photo is still easily accessible with this thing plugged in. I hate plug in devices that block other inputs/ports.
If you use Linux (dual boot for instance) you can disable it with this boot arg for the kernel in Grub (and LILO too, you Slackware users, or Refind/Syslinux). Just append:
usb.autosuspend=-1 usbcore.autosuspend=-1
to the
linux quiet=1 foo bar blah blah... line in your /etc/default/grub, /etc/lilo.conf or whatever bootloader you use. Then, run update-grub or similar.
Yeah, that's one thing we lost with USB-C. The USB-A port was big enough for a whole system (storage device, wireless chip, security processor) to fit inside. With type C we're back to dongles hanging out.
One would hope the durability of this is keeping pace with the capacity. If not, what is the niche? The 1TB is an enticement to use this for more than shuffling files from place to place. But absent the durability I would not want to do that.
They could get rid of the overheating problems by slapping some Frore systems cooling chips on the dies and IO chips. No need to cook the mf out of the chips as we already have solutions to cool them.
Back when Macbook airs had tiny drives and sdcard slots, there were multiple vendors selling flush-mount sd cards. They work surprisingly well, they can sink heat well into the aluminum body.
This product isn't quite there yet, but it's clearly aiming for the same market.
When will they start offering flash drives which have a "rubbery" connection to itself (imagine a tenth of an inch of flex cable in silicon) so the port won't take a beating.
SSK and Transcend sell USB-C SSD thumb drives with speeds of 1000 MB/s. They're SSDs though, not flash memory, but they are thumb drives, not big boxes.
At around 120C or so lead solder can become weaker, and this temperature is forbidden in devices that experience vibration or other perturbations. Unleaded solders can handle higher temperatures. All consumer products today are RoHS 6 and so do not have lead.
It would not surprise me if a heavily written ss device in an unventilated environment, such a laptop on a bed with a blanket covering it, or left operating in a bag, could get close to such a temperature on the PCBA. It would also dissipate heat to the USB connector of the laptop, possibly weakening it as well.
Looks like there are some data and guidelines are in ISO 13732-1:2006. $250ish per download, as well as probably available in the company intranet/local city library for free access.
When I was studying at university, I had the highest-capacity USB drive of its time, which was 64mb. I was able to fit all my Word documents and some extras, and still felt huge. I can't find a reason for anyone to use a tiny flash drive and store 1tb info on it. It is too risky to store anything important without a backup. Versioning is also an issue and must be synced somewhere all the time. I thought we were over flash drives already. I only use flash drives for installing fresh distros on old computers. Can't find a reason to use them anymore.
I used SanDisk Cruzer Fit https://amzn.to/47OqNXT for a very long time (USB 2.0) for ESXi server installations too. Never had a problem. But this "new" design looks terrible.
Backup drive is my use-case. But that means a mountain of sustained write traffic, which means thermals are important, which is where this thing sucks. I had been using a regular external with a short cable, until I got a Framework and decided to try one of their "fits in the module slot" SSDs, which is perfect.
I still pop it out after the backup and store it elsewhere, but it's lovely that during the backup job (which can take a while if it's doing a fresh copy), it's completely unobtrusive and can't break off if I set the lappy down wrong.
Maybe they have a GoPro and want to be able to do some basic 4K video manipulation. Or want to download some warez or porn, or use it as a backup drive, etc.
1TB is enough space to be actually useful for some of this, and if you have a somewhat older laptop, it might only have 256GB or 512GB internal.
I've pretty much stopped using 'stick' type storage for anything >256MB, as regardless of brand and series, my experience is that these thingies overheat under anything but light write usage, and either slow to a crawl or drop off the USB bus entirely before my copy is finished.
'Credit card' sized SSDs are not that much more inconvenient to carry and store, and don't exhibit any of these issues for me.
And the thermals on these things must be horrible, plus the label makes it look like a knock-off: Sandirk?
NVMe enclosure are cheap, mine is a ugreen supporting usb 3.2 gen2 and i paid less than 20 euro. Put any kind of half decent nvme in it covered by one of those cheap heat dissipator.
Any recommendations for >20gbit/s enclosures with passive cooling (that are also not huge)?
I have a 10gbit/s enclosure and a 4TB gen4 nvme in it. It pains me to know that it could achieve >3GB/s write speeds but hindered by the interface.
And they are fast
I've always wondered about why those little gadgets don't come with metal encasings bonded to the chip with a thermal pad, or putty out of the factory. Be it brushed aluminum, copper, or another alloy. Brushed, anodized, or with fins for 'heavy duty (outdoor/industrial?)' use(which you could clean with a brush, if need be).
There should be a market/demand for that, when people are paying fantasy prices for gamified crap, yes?
The most irritating thing about the credit-card sized ones, are how they aren’t attached if you move around.
I like to be mobile, so I put some velcro ultra-mate on the back of my laptop, and also on my disk, then the disk can be attached and plugged in while I move around.
I also got a 90-degree USB-C cable for a more direct cable route.
Is this what we get when we stop making laptops with upgradeable internal storage?
I just upgraded the internal storage of my Lenovo T14 (AMD, Gen6) to 4TB, and that took all of 5 minutes. And that laptop was definitely made in 2025, although I agree that consumer sentiment overwhelmingly favors models that are less convenient in that respect.
Same, with an x1 gen5, upgraded NVME to 1TB
This boy is 8 year old today (bought in 2017 November) and still delivers me the €€€ at $consultingjob
Meanwhile, modern Apple users: https://youtu.be/RDBX6FTYLoQ
For me it was pure ASMR content
I still utilize large external drives on my laptop with upgradeable storage, so we get it either way.
Not really an issue outside the Apple ecosystem and a few fringe tablet hybrids like from Microsoft. Vast majority of laptops sold today have standard SSDs you can upgrade.
> Vast majority of laptops sold today have standard SSDs you can upgrade.
Though some make it quite difficult to get in to replace the drive, and put everything back together after.
Some are very easy: an obvious compartment at the bottom, unscrew lid, remove drive, put in replacement, power up and transfer old content, done. I've seen both NVMe and 2.5" SATA drives arranged this way. On the other hand, upgrading my friend's laptop recently involved taking most of it apart, the drive was under the keyboard inaccessible from the back, with other link cables (for keyboard, antenna, screen) in the way so they had to be disconnected and were in very inconvenient arrangements for reconnecting after…
What do you do with all that storage?
Here's the root partition (well, lvm) on a laptop I have been using for over three years now
I do have an external drive for backups and another for drone footage but this is it. Everything else is either fast enough in the cloud or just here.I record video in raw, so it’s mainly dealing with video files during editing.
I want to see if I can move to prores in my import step, but I haven’t found a good workflow that allows for that.
Even smaller and faster are nvme enclosures over thunderbolt. Easily can be boot drive.
Any recommended enclosures that work reliably with Linux?
These days most of them seem to work just fine on Linux, Windows, and Mac. I use several brands across all 3 and never had an issue. I like the DOCKCASE Visual Smart ($40) or Explorer Edition ($50). They have large capacitors to provide 10 seconds of power loss protection, support 10Gbps USB speeds, and have a second USB port just for power which makes it compatible with SSD's that draw a lot of power. I like the info on the little screens because I swap SSD's in/out frequently. There are cheaper ones that work fine too - the "SABRENT USB 3.2 Type-C Tool-Free Enclosure" ($30) is nice for, well, not needing a screwdriver to swap out the drive - but it might not deliver enough power for some overkill SSD like the (now Sandisk) WD Black SN8100 - but the DockCase will, as long as you also plug in an auxiliary power USB cable.
A drive like the Patriot Memory P400 Lite is very low power, so it works with cheaper enclosures or USB ports that don't deliver as much power to the peripheral. It also generates less heat, which can help sustain performance depending on the enclosure and environment.
Which filesystem do you use that handles large disks and can be mounted by Linux, Windows, and Mac?
I have experience with ext4 not through deliberate choice but through circumstance.
ext4 can't be natively mounted in Mac and Windows but you can install third party software and still mount it from the command line easily. And of course ext4 works fine with Linux natively.
I don't know if you can install the Mac OS or Windows OS on an ext4 drive and directly boot from it, however.
Ext4 and NTFS. FUSE for linux and Paragon Software for MacOS. Though often I have three partitions, so I use APFS, NTFS, and Ext4 on the same drive.
When you say Linux, reliability depends on distro. I had tried to install Mint on an external harddrive, and the stupid installer modified the boot loader to search for Grub on the removable disk. No removable disk, no grub, no booting of any OS. Idiotic. Lets not get started on the repair/recovery process since another mainstream OS recovery tools wont mount Fat32 EFI partition in R/W, needed to verify the uuid for bootmanager.exe - long story short, had to reinstall everything. Note - neither Windows or Linux are on that box anymore, but Haiku and OSX works brilliantly.
I am begining to dislike mint, that I incidentaly downoaded via mobile data onto an old hinky android phone, then put on a usb drive with a usb/c adapter, with "etchDroid", and booted an ancient desk top with. The phone I have now, has a sim tray with places for 2 SIM's and an SD card, so with one of these 1TB, USB-C drives and a 1 TB SD card, it should be possible to carry a local copy of OSM, and a copy of wikipedia(text only) with plenty of room left, the full wiki is a monsterous 410 TB
No need for thunderbolt, had good experience with good old high speed usb.
I have to admit I still don't really know what thunderbolt even is. I think it's something that is done over USB-C, and requires hardware support on the CPU.
I'm guessing it's one search query + a one minute read away though. I just haven't.
It's a stylized S but it seems to be the official 'SanDisk' - the same image is on https://shop.sandisk.com/products/usb-flash-drives/sandisk-e..., linked in the article
I have two SSK USB sticks that give me write speeds of up to 1GB/s (as long as they're not filled to the brim). I've copied things like 80GB games in something like 2-3 minutes. A real SSD will always be best, but I'm pretty happy with these USB sticks.
The USB sticks you talk about are basically USB SSDs, not what we know as traditional thumb drives.
I have a similar one too from HP(PNY), and it's crazy fast for its size, but the issue is its controller (ASMedia IIRC) reports it to the OS as a UAS (USB Attached SCSI), similar to an external HDD, instead of Removable Mass Storage as most thumb drives do, so you can't hot -plug/-unplug it, and that controller seems to be backlisted by the Linux kernel for some reason, so it's not recognized on linux unless I fiddle with the "options usb-storage quirks" kernel parameters, but even so my BIOS can't detect it to boot from it. From what I understand the issue causing all this is that it's a native 4K-block device causing issues with booting on it as typically 512-byte block native devices are required for EFI boot, or at least that have 512-byte emulation support which this controller does not.
I am so disappointed because I bought a fast USB SSD to install and dual boot Linux on it as a second drive for my Windows laptop. If only I knew that there's such a big difference in the types of USB drives out there and that they're not all remotely the same.
So do your due diligence on linux compatibility, if you ever want to buy these USB SSDs.
This USB SSD boots Debian Linux 6.1 kernel on HP Ryzen laptop, https://www.pny.com/PNY-DUO-Link-V3-USB-3-2-Gen-2-Type-C-OTG...
Thanks I already switched to a SATA SSD with USB3.0 adapter that works for booting Linux, I'm just annoyed spending the money on a fast pricy USB drive that doesn't work for anything else than Windows file transfers because of some BS technicality.
Tiny form factor USB drives have been around for ages¹ but only for USB-A ports, so I assume the news here is the USB-C connector (and the availability of capacity over 256Gb). This would be nice, I've been looking for something small that will go in a C port without an adaptor that stops it being so tiny any more, but the shape of these looks like it would irritate me, sitting “high” above the port and likely above the device it is plugged into.
The closest I've found are minimal size dual-port things like https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0B5S29JWY/ but they could be half the length (when inserted) without the A connector at all. I have no portable devices without at least as many C ports as A's, non-portable devices with only A ports I can stick a C-in-A adaptor or two semi-permanently into.
--------
[1] Examples: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07HPX38XC/ https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07YYMX5LQ/ https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08772NT1L/
"up to 1 TB capacity... starting launch price is $15.99"
I have adblock, how did this SanDisk commercial make it through?
Goes well with their affiliate links. And it's actually discounted to $14.99 at sandisk https://shop.sandisk.com/products/usb-flash-drives/sandisk-e...
Just buy microsd to sd adapter that sits completely flush in the case. Like this called BaseQi:
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0822/8493/files/feature-1_...
Also "just buy" a MacBook Pro to go with it?
Speed and write durability are both going to be trash, alas.
Plug and stay
Hopefully, this has been tested for durability and some MTBF specs are available to prove it.
Otherwise, buyer beware.
EDIT: I couldn't find any MBTF specs so I looked up the "limited warranty" for this product.
There is no warranty of uninterrupted or error-free operation.
I want one that is shaped like the USB-C port. Like it was extruded from the port. About as long as a key, maybe a shorter key, like a mailbox key. Has a rounded end with a hole to make a very sturdy keyring hole. Capacity is limited to what would be reliable and not overheat. <1g.
I was foolish enough to buy SanDisk.
SanDisk flashdrives get extremely hot and die in months.
The warranty process is time consuming and tedious.
I stick to Samsung flashdrives now.
SanDisks are very frequently fake, even in brick and mortar stores. Could it be you had a fake one?
Can't say i have the same experiences. The only products to fail me where really really cheap AliExpress devices.
Sandisk in general I’ve had good luck with - but there are a ton of fakes out there.
That said, I see no way this drive could dissipate any useful amount of heat at all, so suspicious it would be a problem under sustained write loads.
Especially since most use cases likely would never have sustained write loads.
I prefer the SK Hynix Beetle (X31) and Tube (T31) to Samsung flash drives, because internally the are DRAM SSDs, I hope they come out with new models.
I’d rather not have something like that poking out. Looks like it’ll ruin the port when for example it hooks behind something
I also wonder if the HDMI port in the stock photo is still easily accessible with this thing plugged in. I hate plug in devices that block other inputs/ports.
That's a more general problem with USB.
The problem I have with USB on windows is how windows insists on turning off/crashing drivers for anything attached to USB for long periods of time.
It’s gotten to the point I just turn off my machine (instead of power saving) so that things actually work when I turn it on.
If you use Linux (dual boot for instance) you can disable it with this boot arg for the kernel in Grub (and LILO too, you Slackware users, or Refind/Syslinux). Just append:
to the It will draw more power on laptops but not much.> Error: Failed to load script: Fallback Failed
That’s unfortunate, apparently the site requires some js, that is probably blocked by my firewall, to even load the page.
https://shop.sandisk.com/products/usb-flash-drives/sandisk-e...
I had a USB-A from sandisk which was very solid and I used it for years. It wasn't flush with the body of the laptop, but was rounded and strong.
This looks super flimsy and like it might break off easily and ruin your port.
Yeah, that's one thing we lost with USB-C. The USB-A port was big enough for a whole system (storage device, wireless chip, security processor) to fit inside. With type C we're back to dongles hanging out.
One would hope the durability of this is keeping pace with the capacity. If not, what is the niche? The 1TB is an enticement to use this for more than shuffling files from place to place. But absent the durability I would not want to do that.
They could get rid of the overheating problems by slapping some Frore systems cooling chips on the dies and IO chips. No need to cook the mf out of the chips as we already have solutions to cool them.
Durability is more important of capacity+size. Something flash drives are not known for in general.
Back when Macbook airs had tiny drives and sdcard slots, there were multiple vendors selling flush-mount sd cards. They work surprisingly well, they can sink heat well into the aluminum body.
This product isn't quite there yet, but it's clearly aiming for the same market.
There are still for any macbook pro with sd card slot. BaseQi or similar
Nothing beats cheap storage like that and completely flush with the case
But how reliable is it? I've heard stories about how unreliable it is, and it's got me concerned.
running a parallels windows install off one, no issues. macos does unmount if battery gets really low but not really an issue after reboot or replug.
I have a few of those still lying around, they were great!
When will they start offering flash drives which have a "rubbery" connection to itself (imagine a tenth of an inch of flex cable in silicon) so the port won't take a beating.
I've used a similar drive on my Chromebooks for the last decade.
I went looking for a USB-C version and was surprised not to find one.
I would love to see one with SSD speeds if such a thing is possible.
SSK and Transcend sell USB-C SSD thumb drives with speeds of 1000 MB/s. They're SSDs though, not flash memory, but they are thumb drives, not big boxes.
How hot do these things get? I have a few "bar" type USB sticks that get quite warm after even moderate amounts of data transfer.
With how short the drive is, I think the USB port and the rest of your pc’s motherboard will act as a heatsink for the drive.
How hot is "quite warm"? And how hot is too hot?
From my own observation: Anything over 40C or so feels quite warm to my own touch, but 40C is generally rather insignificant to a solid-state IC.
At around 120C or so lead solder can become weaker, and this temperature is forbidden in devices that experience vibration or other perturbations. Unleaded solders can handle higher temperatures. All consumer products today are RoHS 6 and so do not have lead.
It would not surprise me if a heavily written ss device in an unventilated environment, such a laptop on a bed with a blanket covering it, or left operating in a bag, could get close to such a temperature on the PCBA. It would also dissipate heat to the USB connector of the laptop, possibly weakening it as well.
Looks like there are some data and guidelines are in ISO 13732-1:2006. $250ish per download, as well as probably available in the company intranet/local city library for free access.
I had one of these break within a few days of purchase. It's a no for me.
> Claims to be extreme fit
> Shaped unlike any other USB memory stick and has awkward ill-fitting shape
Genuis
When I was studying at university, I had the highest-capacity USB drive of its time, which was 64mb. I was able to fit all my Word documents and some extras, and still felt huge. I can't find a reason for anyone to use a tiny flash drive and store 1tb info on it. It is too risky to store anything important without a backup. Versioning is also an issue and must be synced somewhere all the time. I thought we were over flash drives already. I only use flash drives for installing fresh distros on old computers. Can't find a reason to use them anymore.
I used SanDisk Cruzer Fit https://amzn.to/47OqNXT for a very long time (USB 2.0) for ESXi server installations too. Never had a problem. But this "new" design looks terrible.
Backup drive is my use-case. But that means a mountain of sustained write traffic, which means thermals are important, which is where this thing sucks. I had been using a regular external with a short cable, until I got a Framework and decided to try one of their "fits in the module slot" SSDs, which is perfect.
I still pop it out after the backup and store it elsewhere, but it's lovely that during the backup job (which can take a while if it's doing a fresh copy), it's completely unobtrusive and can't break off if I set the lappy down wrong.
Maybe they have a GoPro and want to be able to do some basic 4K video manipulation. Or want to download some warez or porn, or use it as a backup drive, etc.
1TB is enough space to be actually useful for some of this, and if you have a somewhat older laptop, it might only have 256GB or 512GB internal.