Here Are the Top 7 Best Small USB Flash Drives

Why Do You Need a Small USB Flash Drive

USB flash drives are data storage devices that include flash memory with an integrated USB interface. They are typically portable, rewritable, and much smaller than external hard drives. Users can connect a USB flash drive to a PC through the USB port and use it to store or back up their data.

Therefore, if you need to take your files, movies, and pictures with you when you go out, a USB flash drive should be the best choice. However, most USB drives are designed with a thin and long outer body, and they could get banged around and be broken if you put them in your pocket. Besides, they would take some space when users connect them to a PC.

Fortunately, mini USB drives with small size come into being. Designed for notebooks, tablets, in-car audio systems, gaming consoles, and more, they are compact and much shorter than regular USB drives. When you connect a small USB flash drive to your laptop, it only protrudes about 5mm from the edge of the laptop, as you can see in the following picture.

The Top 7 Small USB Flash Drives on Market

If you are also looking for the smallest USB flash drive, you can take the following ones into consideration.

Option 1: Kingston DataTraveler Micro 3.1 USB Flash Drive

• Storage Capacity: 32GB, 64GB, 128GB
• Read speed: Up to 100 MB/s
• Dimensions: 0.98 x 0.48 x 0.18 inches
• Color: Silver
• Warranty: 5-year warranty with free technical support
• Price: Start at $9.99 on Amazon

This DataTraveler Micro 3.1 USB Flash Drive from Kinston is an ultra-small and lightweight USB drive designed with a metal casing and a built-in key loop. It doesn’t have a cap, which is an advantage and disadvantage at the same time. You don’t need to worry about losing it, but the USB drive might be easy to get dirty without a cap.

Besides, this USB drive is compatible with various operating systems, including, Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 8, Mac OS (v. 10.10.x+), Linux (v. 2.6.x+), and Chrome OS. So, you can use it on different devices.

Option 2: Lexar JumpDrive S47 USB 3.1 Flash Drive

• Storage Capacity: 32GB, 64GB, 128GB, 256GB
• Read speed: Up to 250 MB/s
• Dimensions: 5.5 x 4 x 0.3 inches
• Color: Black
• Warranty: 3-year warranty
• Price: Start at $8.99 on Amazon

Lexar JumpDrive S47 USB drive provides high performance with a faster read speed and it is backward compatible with USB 3.0 and 2.0. With the compact and portable design, it is easy to use for TV, gaming consoles, laptops, and more.

The USB drive offers up to 256GB of storage space, you can store a lot of files in one place. Besides, it includes an advanced security solution with 256-bit AES encryption to help protect your essential files from corrupting and losing.

Option 3: Samsung FIT Plus USB 3.1 Flash Drive

• Storage Capacity: 32GB, 64GB, 128GB, 256GB
• Read speed: Up to 300 MB/s for 256/128GB models; Up to 200 MB/s for 64/32GB models.
• Dimensions: 0.90 x 0.70 x 0.30 inches
• Color: Gunmetal Gray
• Warranty: 5-year limited warranty
• Price:Start at $8.99 on Amazon

Samsung FIT Plus USB flash drive can be used as instant storage for your laptops, tablets, TVs, car audio systems, and gaming consoles.

This USB drive of 128 GB and 256GB can read with speeds up to 300MB/s, which means a 3GB 4K UHD video file can be sent from your USB drive to a PC in just 10 seconds. The FIT Plus with less storage capacity is slower, with speeds up to 200MB/s. It is an ideal drive for large files and demanding applications.

To reduce risks of accidental bumps or removal, it comes with a compact, seamless, and unobtrusive design, as well as a waterproof, shock-proof, temperature-proof, magnet-proof, and X-ray-proof body. Similar to Kingston DataTraveler Micro, the Samsung FIT Plus USB flash drive also comes with a key ring to prevent loss.

Option 4: PNY Elite-X Fit USB 3.1 Flash Drive

• Storage Capacity: 64GB, 128GB, 256GB, 512GB
• Read speed: Up to 200MB/s
• Dimensions: 5.15 x 3.85 x 0.55 inches
• Color: Black
• Warranty: 1-year limited warranty
• Price: Start at $10.99 on Amazon

PNY Elite-X Fit USB 3.1 Gen 1 drive has a capacity of up to 512GB and you can store a lot of files. It is backward compatible with USB 2.0 and can be used on most PC and Mac laptop and desktop computers. And the micro-sized and long stay design enables you to connect the USB drive to your computer for maximum convenience.

If you need large capacities, this one should be a good choice for you!

Option 5: SanDisk Ultra Fit USB 3.1 Flash Drive

• Storage Capacity: 16GB, 32GB, 64GB, 128GB, 256GB, 512GB
• Read speed: Up to 130MB/s
• Dimensions: 1.17 x 0.56 x 0.2 inches
• Color: Black
• Warranty: 5-year limited warranty
• Price: Start at $7.99 on Amazon

SanDisk Ultra Fit USB drive provides more flexible storage capacities. If you don’t need large storage space, you can consider this mini USB drive. However, the transfer speed of the SanDisk Ultra Fit USB drive is slower than the above options. If you prefer high performance, this might not be a good option for you.

To protect private files, it includes SanDisk SecureAccess software which is a password protection solution using 128-bit AES encryption. Therefore, if you have a SanDisk Ultra Fit USB drive, your files can be stored relatively safely.

Option 6: SanDisk Ultra Dual Drive M3.0

• Storage Capacity: 16GB, 32GB, 64GB, 128GB, 256GB
• Read speed: Up to 150MB/s
• Dimensions: 1.19 x 1 x 0.47 inches
• Color: Black
• Warranty: 5-year limited warranty
• Price: Start at $6.79 on Amazon

SanDisk Ultra Dual Drive M3.0 is designed with dual micro-USB and USB 3.0 connectors, which makes it easy to transfer content from your Android device to the computer. If you want to back up your mobile photos, videos, and contacts, you might like SanDisk Ultra Dual Drive M3.0.

Option 7: Verbatim Store ‘n’ Stay Nano USB 3.0 Flash Drive

• Storage Capacity: 16GB, 32GB, 64GB
• Read speed: Up to 80MB/s
• Dimensions: 0.69 x 0.56 x 0.31 inches
• Color: Blue
• Warranty: Limited lifetime warranty
• Price: Start at $6.99 on Amazon

This USB drive is small and you can only see a tiny bump protrudes from the USB slot if you connect it to your computer. According to Verbatim, Verbatim Store ‘n’ Stay Nano USB flash drive only works with Windows operating systems. Therefore, you need to think twice before buying this drive, in case you can’t use it.

Are you looking for the smallest USB flash drives? Here are the top seven that you can take into consideration.Click to Tweet

Format Your Small USB Flash Drive

Generally, when a USB flash drive is produced, it will be preformatted with the FAT32 file system which doesn’t support a single file that is larger than 4GB. Therefore, if you have large files to store on your mini USB drive, you need to format the drive to the NTFS file system. You can use Disk Management or professional third-party tools to format your USB drive.

For the third-party tool, I recommend MiniTool Partition Wizard. It is a reliable and professional disk manager. With this tool, you can not only format your mini USB drive with a few clicks but also convert FAT32 to NTFS without data loss if you have stored data on it. Now, let’s see how to format your mini USB drive.

Step 1: Download and install MiniTool Partition Wizard by clicking the following button.

MiniTool Partition Wizard FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

Step 2: Connect the small USB drive to your computer and launch MiniTool Partition Wizard.

Step 3: Right-click the partition on your USB flash drive and select Format.

Step 4: In the pop-up window, select NTFS for the File System and click OK.

Step 5: When you go back to the main interface, click Apply to execute the pending operations and start formatting your small USB flash drive.

How to format your mini USB drive? MiniTool Partition Wizard is a good tool.Click to Tweet

Bottom Line

Here are the top 7 small USB flash drives in this post, and you can choose one according to your requirements for storage space, dimensions, color, read speed, price, etc. You can search them on Amazon and contact the seller to get more information about the products.

If you want to share your reviews or other small USB flash drives with us, you can leave a message in the following comment zone. For any questions about MiniTool Partition Wizard software, you can contact the support team via [email protected].

Small USB Flash Drive FAQ