When Craig asks questions like this I always assume he's gathering information for something.
 
As far as using USB flash drives, I've found they work well in the way AllanH explained -- mainly read only operations for large sound banks. Writes are generally faster with the more expensive drives like SanDisk's Extreme line, but I wouldn't record directly to them except in a pinch. Obviously, any old USB flash drive can be used as a secondary archive.

A very interesting idea for sample libraries, I think I'll give it a go!

I've been using the same USB ssd for Linux and playing music in the car for years. No issues. I run Ubuntu studio so I'm recording live shows booted to it.

I have a fat partition and a Linux partition so I have dual purpose.

As far as I know the technology is the same in SSDs & flash drives, flash memory, so the difference in cost reflects the quality/reliability. You can buy a super talent usb 3 RaidDrive 128 GB flash drive that has an MTBF of 1,000,000,000 hrs, it is Raid 0, and has EDC/ECC, but it's $540.
 
I don't run my SSDs in Raid configuration so a non-raid super talent usb 3 Express 128 GB flash drive runs $215. That's still an MTBF of 1,000,000,000 hrs, and has EDC/ECC, but the write speed drops since it is not Raid 0.
 
According to the link below even a generic flash drive performed 77 million writes before failing.
 
http://www.zdnet.com/article/usb-drive-life-fact-or-fiction/
 
 

Psychobillybob
 
 
You missed the part about running a real studio vs recording as a hobby..."mobile studio" sure run all the USB2/3 all you want thats fine out of a van or form the side of stage somewhere, not gonna work sending it to a mastering house or as an industry standard.

 
Of course if you make the wrong assumptions, you will come to the wrong conclusions.
 

And yes my axe with Craig is his general lack of credentials in anything like recent studio work, it shows up in post like this, and there's always a few fanboys to defend his general lack of actual current studio credibility, go figure,

 
I just mastered the album "Trigger" for Bryan Ferry's lead guitarist. I won an award for one of the classical recordings I did a couple years back, and have more classical production, engineering, and mastering projects slated for 2018 (by the way classical music projects are pretty demanding). Did a radio spot for a $4 billion dollar multinational corporation a couple months ago. I'm editing a loop library from funk legend Mike Clark (if you don't know who he is, look him up). I've been enlisted to help mix and master a project that Brian Hardgroove (ex-Public Enemy) is doing with Stewart Copeland (ex-Police), and finished mastering a song two months ago by Fred Schneider of the B-52's for an upcoming film.
 
If it would make you happy,  I can brag more in future posts about the stuff I'm doing. I just figure most of it is irrelevant for people who just want to know how to accomplish something with SONAR. 

And since you seem to think the projects I do are just "hobby" projects, no projects for clients are recorded to a USB flash drive. My backup media for clients are a pair of hard drives, and Blu-Ray data discs (two copies from different manufacturers, one set stored off-site with the client) using discs with non-LTH dyes. Surely you are aware that when stored under proper environmental storage conditions, non-LTH Blu-Rays are more reliable and have a longer life than SSD (which will die for the same reasons as flash drives, they're just more robust and will last longer), hard drives, flash drives, standard DVDs, etc.
 
However I also do a lot, and I mean a LOT, of testing and that involves doing projects with tons of read/write cycles. Why should I wear out an SSD when I can record to a flash drive and have a reasonable expectation that the project can survive for a few weeks or even several months?
 
The only problem that shows up "in a post like this" is your reading into it something that conforms to your prejudices instead of reading what I wrote. The only two use cases I mentioned were storing samples for Rapture Pro and "for regular songs, it works very well for playback." It think pretty much everyone knows that flash drives can read wicked fast. Storing samples on them for reading, or songs for playback, is fast, and you're not dealing with the issues caused by multiple and extensive re-writes. 
 
Then I asked the question about using them for projects. Why? Because QSC recently qualified a USB 3.0 drive for recording with their TouchMix 32 mixer. I wanted to know what kind of experience people had, if any, with using them for complete projects. Yes, I also do quick mobile recordings (e.g., field recordings for sample libraries) and I'd rather not take an SSD from the studio that has other data I can't afford to lose when I can just bring a USB flash drive for quick backup or even potentially (which is why I asked the question) real-time recording.
 
Open-minded people who don't have an axe to grind might be curious about how I do use USB 3.0 drives currently. Studio One has around 25 GB of content and I have about 60 GB of Rapture Pro Content and my own "go-to" loops. I want to use this content on a Windows desktop and a MacBook Pro with an SSD drive that doesn't have enough space for 85 GB of storage that just sits there most of the time. I put the content (which is backed up to four Blu-Ray discs) on a USB drive and keep it tethered to the desktop for reading content into SONAR, Ableton Live, and Studio One. But when I go on the road, I can pop the flash drive into my computer bag and use it with the Mac. If it gets run over by a truck, no big deal.
 
The reason I like to tether USB drives is the connectors themselves are typically rated at only 1500 insert/remove cycles. Because I use the drives primarily for transfers, it's more likely there will be a mechanical failure before a cumulative cell failure that makes the flash drive inoperable.
 
I have another USB drive tethered to my desktop. My projects are always stored on two hard drives. However, at the end of the night, I copy everything I did that day to the flash drive so I have yet another backup should anything happen with the hard drives. I usually flush the flash a few days later as it gets replaced with what's next.
 
Flash drives are also handy with Ableton Live for unique reasons which probably don't interest you. I've written about this in the past.
 

 there's always a few fanboys to defend his general lack of actual current studio credibility

 
That's probably because they actually know my credits. 
  
 
 
 

 

Psychobillybob

tenfoot

Psychobillybob
Wow.
 
" Does anyone think using a flash drive for doing projects  isn't a good idea?"

This is indicative of someone who has never really been responsible for other peoples recordings..I would never in a million years think of using something as temperamental as a USB storage device to keep ANY project I was interested in maintaining, let alone a project for any client, and therein might be the major difference in how this product was used...recording studio or hobbyist. I barely ever used USB to BACKUP anything, usually just moving things from machine to machine until I got the network set up.

USB bus has a lower SUSTAINED throughput...it might be "as" fast but the data delivery guarantee compared to fire-wire is much lower.

And honestly for a few bucks more you can have a 128 gig SSD drive that is faster than USB and has a better lifespan.

Impermanence is a mindset practiced by users not builders.

Hmmm. Aside from the massively judgemental personal assumptions (you seem to have a bit of an axe to grind there ole mate!), I might have agreed in 2007. When we were tethered to USB2, I used firewire or e-sata for anything I could as there was a massive performance advantage over usb2. That said, both were plagued with compatability issues. I remember spending days tracking down laptops with Texas Instruments controllers to ensure they would work with my devices. Since USB3, the performance difference is far less, and more importantly, USB 3 easily handles anything you throw at it for audio production, and there are almost no compatability issues with any type of device. 
You seem to also be conflating flash drives with all USB storage. My portable studio setup has been USB storage based for 10 years, and I have never lost mine or anyone elses recordings.
 

You missed the part about running a real studio vs recording as a hobby..."mobile studio" sure run all the USB2/3 all you want thats fine out of a van or form the side of stage somewhere, not gonna work sending it to a mastering house or as an industry standard.

And yes my axe with Craig is his general lack of credentials in anything like recent studio work, it shows up in post like this, and there's always a few fanboys to defend his general lack of actual current studio credibility, go figure, I am after all on the Sonar forum soon to be the dustbin following the footsteps of Gigastudio...but perhaps my issue should have been with Gibson not giving a rats ass about product placement in the recording studio industry.

This caused a ripple cringe in my normal blase morning. 

The concern I'd have with a flash drive is write endurance. Real SSDs have overprovisioning and smart controllers that deal with the fragility of flash memory and make them last a long time. Sticks usually don't, to keep cost down. They are a dirt simple controller and a flash chip. So what it means is they can just all of a sudden fail and lose some or all of your data. Of course something heavy hitting like recording thrashes the data around on there more, leading to an increased chance of an issue.
 
If I was going to do something like recording to a stick I'd probably get one of the ones that are designed for Windows to Go since they are usually not only faster but more resilient, often having SSD controllers on board. The Kingston DataTraveler Workspace and the Super Talent Express RC4 are two I have experience with at work that seem to do well.

Isn't there a physical limit to the number of times that a USB drive can be written to before it dies?

Psychobillybob
You missed the part about running a real studio vs recording as a hobby..."mobile studio" sure run all the USB2/3 all you want thats fine out of a van or form the side of stage somewhere, not gonna work sending it to a mastering house or as an industry standard.

Ah, sorry. I didn't realise you were that one guy on earth who has a real recording studio. You need to make more of an effort when you enter the room to be as obnoxious and self aggrandizing as you clearly have the right to be so that the rest of us realise your singular importance. 
 
Good to know its OK for me to use my usb 3 drives whilst I am out with my mobile rig. Equally good to know I should never, under any circumstance, bring those recordings into my studio when I get back. What a fool I've been. Here I was thinking usb was a standard interface on almost every computer on earth, and it was OK to use it. Should I throw away my RME interfaces too? They use the same obviously inferior connection.. 
 
In the 80's and 90's mastering houses were indeed terribly fussy about how you submited work. But let me point out the bleeding obvious. Since the proliferation of digital, mastering houses will take your work any way you would like to give it to them. It's digital. You know. Zeros and ones. Just as long as it is matched by a digital transfer of funds, you'll be fine. Rumour has it you can even transfer files to something called an in-house server, then you dont even have to jump in your van to get there, which is probably a good thing. It is no doubt full of those usb drives that you cant use anywhere else.
 
I have encountered my fair share of elitist rants based on little more than self serving bias over the years, but railing against arguably the worlds most popular computer communication protocol is a whole new level of absurd. I suspect this has little to do with usb. Rather, a sad and needy individual lurking in the shadows looking to take one last swing at Craig who clearly recieved all of the attention that was rightfully theirs. Here's an idea. Contribute something positive. 

musicroom
 
This caused a ripple cringe in my normal blase morning. 

 
Haha. Nice. Awesome turn of phrase:)