There are different grades of drives.
The same general rule of "you get what you pay for" applies to purchasing custom USB flash drives.
The internal drives have different quality grades.
Standard Media Services only deals in high A grade Samsung quality memory that has a lifetime warranty.
Some lower level drive grades (C & D grade) can include poor soldering, low grade internal components, improperly recycled electronic components, or can use harmful elements in their assembly like hexavalent chromium (...
yes...
the Erin Brokovich stuff), lead, cadmium, and mercury.
Drives that do not include these elements are considered compliant with the Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive (ROHS).
This involves a physical manual check to ensure that every drive we deliver is formatted correctly, functional, accessible empty, and is up to snuff for the porting into anyone and everyone's computer with no issue whatsoever.
These are essential items to look for when shopping.
Reliability of the drive is the most important thing.
Secondly, when considering the presentation of your media, take into consideration the personal use of the drives for the user.
A drive partition is a good way to ensure that whatever media you've included for the user stays on there, but ensure that you're providing enough storage capacity for other use if desired.
Purchasing a series of 128 MB drives, and then partitioning the drive with the majority of it being used is a sure fire way to frustrate.
We conducted an independent survey over the course of 3 months with our custom USB flash drive clients, and found that most users were happy with at least 1 GB of space to use.