Ultra Fit USB 3.0: Excessive Heat

I just purchased a 128GB Ultra Fit and it overheats and disconnects when used with a HooToo USB 3.0 hub.

So I tried it with a USB 3.0 extension cable and it also gets too hot to touch, but I don’t think my transfer went long enough to have it disconnect. I’m going to try it with my laptop’s port after it cools down.

It’s pretty ridiculous this product is being sold with this problem.

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Reading and Writing to the Ultra Fit on my Acer laptop didn’t have any disconnects, but the metal part did get really hot.

Maybe the USB hub is providing TOO much power?

Since I bought this mostly for my laptop I won’t be returning it since it doesn’t seem to be affected by the disconnection problems.

I bought the SanDisk USB OTG 64GB thumbdrive, it feels hot at the USB connector, but not as hot as Verbatim 64GB Thumbdrive,

The Verbatim branded thumbdrive get really hot(whole body is aluminium) even if plugged into smartphone after prolonged use.

I guess it’s pretty normal for small thumbdrive gets hot, because of smaller heat dissipating area.

I installed a live Linux distro (Knoppix) on those. It is the first time in ten years that a USB drive kills two of my computers. Not the same flash drive, but two units of the same Ultra Fit 3.0 model (32 GB). Not buying again.

Killed the computer? Or is the USB drive is dead? These are retail drives not really designed to have an OS running from and from your other posts you state the computers are for research purposes. Depending on the workload you ahve running on these machines (data logging especially) you may simply be wearing the drives out. 

Depending on the workload you ahve running on these machines (data logging especially) you may simply be wearing the drives out. 

Especially if the drives are formatted as ext3, ext4 or ntfs.

I never heard of flash drives “killing” a PC. There might be a fatal short in the USB port you should check out. For daily use, use a total in-RAM OS like Porteus or Puppy which are specifically designed to minimize USB access and markedly extend the life of flash drives. You can install Mint or Fedora or Ubuntu but I’d limit their use on flash drives to just occasional although this flash wear-and-tear issue is almost arbitrary since memory has improved such that flash lifetimes and incidents of developing corrupted cells is measured in years with “normal” daily use. Only real-world feedback on this can tell the story.

Jim in NYC

Hello

I have just bought the 32 gb Ultra fit

And came to this forum by searching ultrafit exesive heat after transfering 5 1,5 gb files first through a usb port, then through a USB 3 hub. 

I think it is too hot indeed

And now that I have read all I really want to ask you if it could damage my compute r (???)

Maybe I should just return it

BUT It is really not comfortable for me as I bought it on a trip

I hope it can get fixed or changed

Thanks everybody

 PS 

I have to say it clear It is not just a little warmer

it is VERY VERY hot

If it is in a USB hub I don’t see how it could damage your computer.  Can we assume when you’re not copying large files to it it runs cooler?

I can concur. My 128Gb Ultra Fit runs too hot as well. To the point where it begins to disconnect and reconnect constantly. The only solution is to cool the drive down and resume operations. However it only takes around 5 minutes of copying before it begins to exhibit problems.

I’ve tried blowing cool air regularly into my USB hub and it appears to remove the disconnect issue, which clearly shows that this is a heat issue.

I’ve tried the drive in both a USB hub and directly on the ports on my motherboard. They both cause it to fail eventually.

Not good Sandisk. Perhaps I got a faulty drive - I hope so - otherwise that’s just poor design and testing.

I’ve got mine, a 64 GB Sandisk Ultra Fit 3.0 yesterday (SDCZ43).

Completely agree with others that this USB stick runs too hot! I also noticed that the performance dropped when it gets too hot and resume after several seconds passed.

I share the same concerns like others that this USB stick might somehow damage my USB 3.0 port.

I had the 16 GB Sandisk Cruzer Fit 2.0 and this one runs much cooler. Is it anything I can do to get rid of the heat issue rather than return it?

same here, i bought 64 GB SanDisk Ultra Dual USB Drive 3.0, i just plugged-in only (both PC and my Android phone), not doing anything, then it gets very hot. Do you solution for this, @dromedary? i am afraid that i bought defect product. Can we get replacement for it? If you have, please share your solution.

thank you and best regards,
Gunawan Agung

In addition, I measured the current drawn by the Ultra Fit USB 3.0, it is more than 4x higher than the current drawn by the Cruzer Fit USB 2.0.

Ultra Fit USB 3.0 = 896 mA

Cruzer Fit USB 2.0 = 200 mA

Could this be the reason of the overheat, considering the physical size is not much larger while the power has increased 4 times.

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Unbelieveable

The first answer from “Sandisk” is critisism towards a Sandisk user.

I plugged the drive in my computer and it got hot.

It got hot before I transfered anything to or from the drive.

The longest that I can touch the plugged in drive is 4 seconds before I have to pull my hand away.

I get the same result from USB2.0 ports, USB3 ports, and my MP3 player.

The flashdrive has a 5year garantee, but I assume that does not cover the equipment the dirve is plugged into…

SanDisk… your responses are aphauling, grabbing at anything the users say to shift the blame?

The first answer from “Sandisk” is critisism towards a Sandisk user.

Can you provide a link to the “first answer” your referring to?  Cause the first answer I see is mine and I don’t see any critisism. 

And BTW this is a users forum, posters are people who use SanDisk products just like you do.

Hi There,

Just to let you know, I have found that this disk overheats, and found many threads about it like this one, that’s why I registered

My Cheap no-name USB 3.0 sustained 20MB/s with my test copying a movie file and a folder full of photos.

The SanDisk UltraFit starts at 90MB/s then all of a sudden drops to about 20MB/s for the rest of the transfer. I note if I pause the transfer for 10 seconds and then resume the speed ramps back up to 90MB/s and again drops off. I did this test many times, even trying different ports.

Really disappointed that my cheap USB stick is better overall than SanDisk. I was expecting that SanDisk was high quality but I am concerned that frequent use may end up doing some damage due to the heat problem. So after paying about 5 times the price of my cheapo USB I now have a dud product. Why should I have to wait for the SanDisk to cool down, I bought it for high speeds so I can get things done faster.

I’m sure many of you have seen this on their website:

So Small You Hardly Know It’s There. So Fast You Barely Have to Wait.

This ultra-small, low profile drive stays put for extra storage, or moves media super-fast between devices. Enjoy performance speeds up to ten times faster than USB 2.0 drives, transfer a full-length movie in less than 40 seconds.

ripped off

Do the excessive heat posters use the drive’s SecureAccess app on it?  I could see encrypting & decrypting large or many files on the drive being a load that could cause excessive heat.

I did not use any encryption appl. Only a plain disk, formatted normally and written with normal copy from either Windows Explorer and Linux.

Even worse, without copying anything, the flashdisk also becomes hot by itself.

formatted normally

So you are not using the USB drive with the factory format?  How did you reformat it and to what format?

Nope. I never trust the factory format as they do mass production and it is understandable that some may be formatted not perfectly. I always reformat on my own computer to let the flashdisk formatted structure matches the computer format.

Format normally = insert the flashdisk to USB port, wait until it is recognized by Windows Explorer (i.e. assigned a drive letter). Then right-click the drive letter and select Format.