SanDisk - Cruzer 16GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive - Black

Sandisk puts software on its' Cruzers to allow you to have software available to you on the road. The application software allowed, however, is not of your choosing and you must buy generic browsers, word processors and such. Unnecessary if you have a laptop or netbook or are using hotel computers. There may be a security advantage and if you're interested in that type of thing, you should check it out before buying. The problem is that if you don't want this capability or the windows and GUI's that keep popping up when you insert the drive, you can't get rid of them. You can delete all system software on the drive but then you get dismount/eject warnings and it re-installs certain folders when you insert the thumbdrive the next time - not enough folders though for the Cruzer system to work again without re-installing other stuff so now you have a hodge-podge mess on your drive and those incessant warnings and pop-ups to kill all the time when all you want to do is see the files on your thumbdrive. If you just want a simple flashdrive to drag files to and from, almost everything else is a better alternative because this is really annoying. Too, it's not easily clear (to me) which Sandisk products have this unwanted "take your important files along" nonsense on them and which don't. I believe the term to look out for is 'Cruzer' but I'm not certain enough of that to buy other Sandisk products and risk getting another toad. I will say the drive has worked flawlessly. It is lightweight plastic and the retractable port is nice and not too common. Just be forewarned you are getting more than you bargain for if you're just looking for a simple thumbdrive to store files on.

Due to Microsoft Windows 8 and 10 needing USB flash drives to create bootable recovery media, and also using several utilities (BooIt Bare Metal, Clonezilla) that also use/create bootable USB drives I purchased the SanDisk brand since I have never had boot trouble with this brand drive. One would think that all known brand USB flash drives would be fairly close in performance - yes maybe one is faster than the other, but generally functionally equivalent. Unfortunately I've had constant trouble with reliable booting from PNY (Inostor) 32GB USB 3.0 Flash drives. Given that the Windows Recovery disk is now a bootable USB flash drive, one cannot afford to have intermittent boot trouble with these drives. Thus my experiment with the less expensive PNY drives as bootable Flash drives has ended - and now I use SanDisk for these type of drives. You can still use PNY for data - I've never had a problem with lost data on a PNY drive. Note that this drive is a USB 2.0 Flash drive. I would have preferred a USB 3 drive since they're faster (and time is money) but they did not have any more at this size and price point in USB 3 in the store. USB 2 drives work in USB 3 "sockets/slots/" - they're compatible, but not as fast. Notice that some companies have taken to saying that their Flash drives are USB 3 compatible - implying they're USB 3 spec'd - beware of misleading package labeling.

I bought this last week for roughly fifty cents a gig, and even after that special it's still pretty inexpensive for what you're getting. Body: solid, with the little slide button on the top to jut the USB fitting in and out of the body. In my opinion this is better than the caps because everyone loses the caps eventually and the USB fitting just hangs out exposed getting beat up. Attachment point: it has a decent little key ring (or lanyard) attachment point which for 64gb worth of data you might want to consider. Transfer speed: quick. I'm using this primarily for backing up native images in high resolution so it's not critical that I get blazing speeds, but I also don't want to hang around watching the transfer bar go across. This drive performs fast enough for me; it seems on par with every other higher-end USB drive I've come across. Bottom line: I'm using this thumb drive as a off-computer storage when doing remote trips in far away places. There are a lot of photos taken which get cleaned off the SD card every day and loaded onto my laptop. This 64gb drives gives me a quick way to make a separate physical back up. Why not just use the cloud? Well, in a lot of "out there" locations there simply is no Internet access and even if you can find a cafe, there are better things to do in paradise than wait around for two hours as gig after gig of data transfers. That's my use, it works great, and if you have a high storage need capacity I'm sure you'll find the same results.

I purchased the Sandisk Cruzer 16gb Flash Drive last month, and so far it has been a nice product for the price. Starts up quickly, and has reasonable transfer speeds for a 2.0 model, although downloading directly to the drive seems a little slow for larger files. The SecureAccess Vault 2.0 feature is a breeze to run and set-up, and is handy for encryption of your files in case of loss, theft, etc. Design is cool enough- rounded end with a tapered edge that has plenty of room to attach a lanyard or carrying cord (not included) without having to squint and battle with the tiny holes that a lot of other flash drives include. Warm orange LED indicator isn't too dim, nor too bright or distracting, and it slowly surges in sleep mode, which is nice. Advertised capacity is 16gb; actual available space is only 14.9gb before opening the Vault feature, knocking the available space down to 14.8gb, but this is the case with nearly all brands, so I wasn't shocked- just something to keep in mind before purchasing, depending on your needs. I picked this up on sale for $7 with free shipping, and it arrived within a week. As long as you don't require lightning-fast transfers or 3.0 speeds, this is a great buy for general use.

I bought this because it was on sale, my main goal was to install the Grand Theft Auto 5 Play disc (disc 2) onto the flash drive so I could benefit from the 360 DVD drive not having to work the whole time I'm playing (Plus it's noisy). When I formatted the USB drive on the Xbox 360 it popped up a "Performance Warning” message saying this drive doesn't meet Xbox 360 performance standards and you may experience problems. I went ahead and tried it anyhow but I experienced pop-up and some textures would load in later than they should during game-play. I ended up taking it back and bought a Patriot Xporter XT Boost 16GB and it works great, it also passed the Xbox performance test. I would only recommend this Sandisk if you're taking advantage of the sale and don't need it for Xbox 360.

I bought this device assuming that there would be some relatively easy way to attach it to a keychain. Without this, it becomes useless, as I don't want to carry it in a pocket. I tried the usual attachments, with no success. It was starting to really annoy me. I went to the hardware store to ask if they had any ideas, but they were no help. When I was walking around, I saw some black zip ties (aka cable ties) and I tried one of the very smallest ones. With a little work, I got one through. It actually provides a pretty secure solution. So if you're frustrated and about to return this because of the pathetic keychain part, try a zip tie!

This is what I get for spending peanuts on a device. This flash drive became write protected after about 2 weeks when transferring some large files to it. Prior to that I was using it frequently with no trouble. But when I tried transferring several 2-3 GB files to it, it just quit and became write protected, meaning that I couldn't put any more files onto it or delete any files from it. Basically it became a tiny "read only" brick. I tried formatting it, virus scanning it, nothing. I copied all my files off it and smashed it in the backyard. This inadvertent issue seems to be a very frequent problem with Cruzer brand flash drives and there is no solution. Avoid. Do yourself a favor and don't spend peanuts on something you intend to get some use out of. Some things in life are worth an extra nickel.

I bought a TCL Roku tv from Best Buy that has a feature called "Live TV Pause" in which you need a USB 2.0 compatible 16GB or greater drive inserted into the USB port of the TV. The tv goes through a formatting of the USB drive at which time it's supposed to work. I have bought now TWO of these drives, neither of which worked. Both gave error messages. I then tried a cheaper PNY usb drive that works flawlessly. Consequently I spent an hour on chat with Sandisk support sending photos of the drive the receipt, etc, only to find out that they could do nothing for me. Expect the worst customer service from Sandisk, so save yourself the trouble and buy a different brand.