after doing some looking last night I think I'll go the sd/Msd route I've been seeing far more positive reviews on sandisk and samsung cards than I have flash drives
That's a perfectly good route. SanDisk large capacity cards are still plagued with fakes though, I'd look to Samsung and PNY.
*PSA* Wii Redump collector's can now unscrub ISO files. So scrubbed games can now be verified. You can find the program to do this here