On Wednesday 19 February 2025 01:12:34 Greenwich Mean Time Philip Webb wrote:
> 250219 Grant Edwards wrote:

> > If they start asking questions, just say: "I tried to format them on
> > my PC. It ran for 10 hours, then failed".  It doesn't matter what they ask
> > apart from "cash refund, replacement or credit?", that's your answer.
> 
> No, you're both quite wrong. "Both sticks came already formatted as 'msdos',
> so why were you trying to reformat them, Mr Customer ?

I smile at the mental gymnastics we have to go through to avoid being advised 
to restart our PC ...  :p

The answer to the hypothetical question the cocky shop assistant would ask is 
to say you HAD TO format the stick because when you attempted to copy a couple 
of 2GB file(s) it took many hours and it failed.

To confirm this would be the case you can just create a single /dev/sdb1 
partition the size of the whole drive, format it[1], before you try to copy 5 
or 6 large files, like e.g. a few full ISOs.   Given what you've observed so 
far I expect one or both of the sticks will fail.

Either way, Kingston will not ask such questions if you return them and should 
readily replace them.  Their DataTraveler sticks come with a 5 year warranty 
and free technical support.  In addition their data sheet states they work 
with MSWindows, MacOS, Linux and ChromeOS.  There are no caveats to avoid 
partitioning and formatting them with any other fs type than what they arrived 
with.

[1] Until recently MSWindows would not allow formatting a partition larger 
than 32GB with FAT, but they increased this to 2TB on a Windows 11 update.  
Therefore these sticks would probably have arrived with exFAT or NTFS 
filesystem format on them.

BTW, the interwebs have posts by a number of disgruntled customers complaining 
of glacial performance, so it seems you're not alone.