PNY - Elite Turbo Attache 4 128GB USB 3.0 Type A Flash Drive - Black/Gray

So, first let me explain something here. This entire endeavor started by purchasing a PNY XLR8 SSD at the store, after two days of not being able to clone my existing hard drive to it or install Windows 10 to it, it went back to the store. Instead of trying again, I just decided to upgrade my memory instead and picked up a 16gb set of the PNY XLR8 PC3-14900 to add to my existing 16gb of 1866MHz. After installation, by motherboard showed a memory check error and after working through that, the PC would only either blue screen or detect my original memory (tried multiple configurations including just the PNY PC3-14900 which blue screened), so the memory went back. While I was at the store, I saw that they were running a sale on the PNY Turbo Plus 64gb & 128gb flash drives; I should have known better...either way, I bought one 64gb & one 128gb, for the price they were hard to pass up. The 64gb Turbo Plus worked as soon as I plugged it in, however, the 128gb Turbo Plus would not be detected by my PC. After updating drivers, trying different USB ports (both 2.0 & 3.0) and looking through disk management, I decided to try another PC with Windows 7 instead of Windows 10. The Windows 7 computer wouldn't detect the USB drive either, so I then tried my Macbook Pro. The Macbook Pro actually recognized it, so with this small glimmer of hope, I decided to try formatting it and then connecting it to the Windows machines after format. This did not work at all; I tried both FAT and ExFAT and while it was still detected and usable by my Mac, the Windows machines won't even acknowledge the USB's existence. Looks like I'm going to have to return/RMA this as well. Is PNY slowly going downhill with their quality control? I think that it's somewhat ridiculous that I've bought 4 different PNY products and 3 of them were absolute failures. How is that possible? I have never had these many problems with their products in the past.

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Initially I considered this flash drive based upon prior experience with PNY products. Once I saw it was on sale I jumped at the chance to grab it. This drive is really speedy and it offers ample storage space for whatever you may need. For example, as soon as I took it out of the package I immediately plugged it in and downloaded two full service packages for an old Windows machine. The device loaded both updates within minutes and still had ample room available. Once I was finished with updating the older Windows machine we own, I proceeded to use it to transfer several movies we had stored on this older machine and moved them to another machine. Once again the device worked like a charm loading those large files in a relatively short period of time and then offloading them even quicker. This is because the drive is compatible with the older USB 2.0 and newer USB 3.0 standards. Our old machine is USB 2.0 only however the new one has the USB 3.0 standards. This compatibility is completely transparent as the drive adjusts itself depending upon what kind of machine to which it connects. If you're looking for a relatively inexpensive flash drive to quickly move large files (or even serve as a temporary storage place for large files), then look no further. I highly recommend this PNY drive.

Here is some test data. I used linux and the dd utility to write and read a 1 GiB file on this drive using a block size of 4 MiB(*), using both USB3 and USB2. The results: USB3: Write 28.5 MiB/s, Read 56.3 MiB/s USB2: Write 26.2 MiB/s, Read 31.8 MiB/s Note that USB3 is not significantly faster than USB2 for writing. Writing speed is limited by the write speed of the memory, not the USB speed. On the other hand, reading is faster with USB3, because the read speed of the memory is faster than the transfer speed of USB2. This drive is relatively fast compared to some other name-brand USB flash drives of this size and price. I have seen some similar USB3 drives with write speeds as low as 4 MB/s. What's the point of USB3, you may ask? I have two of these drives. I got the first one to use with a set-top converter/PVR and I needed a cheap, fast drive that could keep up with real-time HD digital video recording. This works fine. I liked the drive so much that I bought a second to use with my laptop. A few notes: 1) Whatever flash drive you get, make sure you have return privileges in case the drive you get is too slow for your needs. 2) This drive is formatted FAT32 out of the box. Note that FAT32 limits file size to 4 GiB. If you plan to put large multi-media files on it you will probably want to reformat it to exFAT. (*) MiB is binary megabytes; that is, 1 MiB is 2^20 bytes.

I purchased this 128 GB flash drive because I have had smaller PNY drives and had no problem with them. The first one I purchased, I put photos from my cousin's wedding on it so I could get them off of my card. I attempted to also put them on a Google drive. Good thing I did because if I had not, I would have lost more than 850 videos and photos. Some of them did not pull off of the flash drive. Add to that, I had added photos my mom had taken and I had pulled files off of my computer because I had planned to take it in to get the screen fixed. I used it for about two weeks. The first drive had about 84 GB of information on it when it crashed and would not even be recognized by my computer. I took the drive to Geek Squad and they could not get anything from it either. In spite of that, I purchased another one because of the price and my past experience with the smaller drives. I put my mom's photos on this drive and was starting to create the video for my cousin and put photos together etc. The second drive lasted three days when it crashed. This time the computer recognizes the drive, but says it cannot be read. I called PNY and left a message asking for a call back. It has been two weeks with no call back. Time for me to call again!

I am often away from home for extended periods of time so this flash drive is perfect for taking files and photos with me that I may need to refer to or work on while away. I simply transfer anything I might need from my main computer to this flash drive and when I get to my destination, I can access whatever I need and put it on my laptop to work on. Or, I can plug it into a friend's computer if I want to share photos or documents. I recently scanned several albums of family photos, put all the photos on this flash drive and was able to transfer them to other family member's computers or burn all of the photos to a disc so that everyone in the family has copies of these family treasures. Some of the photos were very old and the album pages were beginning to deteriorate. The photos have been saved in the nick of time and will be passed on to other family members for years to come. Many of the photos can be enhanced, repaired or made larger for prints. Family members can also transfer several albums at once to their own flash drives. The size of this flash drive allows you to scan each album page and include several albums and keep them all on this one drive.

Normally I don't write reviews often for products, and I generally take advertised specs with a grain of salt. But this drive was on sale and I wanted something that was affordable and had at least 128gb of space. Quite a few reviews suggested it was "fast" but upon using the drive, I was able to confirm myself that data speeds are quite good. Read speed I got when moving large files from the PNY drive to an internal SSD (tested over 500 MB/s read/write) using USB 3.0 were over 180 MB/s sustained which is considerably good and very close to advertised speeds. Write speeds to the drive for large files from the same setup were slightly slower than advertised at about 75-85 MB/s sustained but still considerably faster than your average flash drive. (Speeds are largely system dependent and will be considerably lower when plugged into a USB 2.0 slot.) Comes format as FAT32 but I would likely suggest changing it to NTFS for best support of large files. Also keep in mind that small files tend to transfer "slower" as rated by the system but overall this drive is very worth the money.

For a flash drive, the 128 GB of storage space is very reasonable for the price Best Buy sells this flash drive for. I have 2 of these flash drives and it's more convenient for me to store backups of my most important files on 2 of these flash drives than an external drive because it's easier for me to transfer my data files between 3 devices, carry the drive around in my pocket, and the transfers are easy and fast since it's USB 3.0. Also, I don't have to worry about the USB connecting cables that sometimes get knocked out of my USB ports like my external drives' cables often do and then I have to start the transfers all over again because they were interrupted by the cables being disconnected. I also don't have to worry about the USB cables breaking or shredding and according to Geek Squad, those cables aren't replaceable. Maybe I could find replacements on Ebay or something but that's more shopping and buying. If you're looking for storage that is more convenient. easier and practical, then this flash drive is an excellent choice.