SanDisk Cruzer Blade 16GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive

Overall good USb Flash drive, its really cheap and fast

Pros: Burst speeds, great. I currently have a linux distro on this USB stick and I am impressed. This drive has amazing burst performance. Ive already accidently run over this drive once and it went through the laundry once, still works even though this doesnt have a cover over the port. Cons: Sustained file transfer speed is horrible. Similar to others that Ive noticed with most USB hard drives, once you get ones larger capacity USB drives (over 4 gigs) sustained speed for transfers larger than 200 MB take about 1 minute per 200MB. This drive never gets warm under heavy use so maybe the limiting of speed is due to heat protection . If you want a simple little USB drive that you can put a live linux distro on, look no further. Just know that this USB drive doesnt have a cap so junk can get caught inside the port. Given how indestructible this little bugger can be I dont think you really need any type of cover on it. One complaint I have heard are my friends worried about loosing it because it is so tiny. I bought this drive because Ive had many sandisk drives in the past which have always been flawless. I currently have one of the sliding designs and I dont like that one nearly as much as this tiny little beauty.

Extremely small and compact, the port is one cohesive unit so it appears that in case it gets bumped while in the USB port its less likely to get bent and it uncludes a small hole so you can attach it to a lanyard so as to not lose it. Im sure this will work fine for users that are just trying to store simple files although it is incredibly slow. Apparently Im more of an advanced user as I ran into a few major issues. First issue: You dont manage any of the files through windows explorer, but rather the SanDisk SecureAccess program (which is also how you password protect everything). The SanDisk SecureAccess program takes FOREVER to load initially (I timed it and it took over 2 minutes to load the screen so I could enter my password and THEN be able to access my files). Uploading files/folders also takes several minutes but opening them oddly doesnt seem to take too long. Second issue: Also, again because of the SanDisk SecureAccess program whenever you open a file it will only open as a read-only file. This makes it so if you have any changes youre making to the document you will have to save a copy to the desktop and then re-upload it. It doesnt simply overwrite the original file with the changes made. An incredibly unnecessary step. Third issue: The SanDisk SecureAccess program apparently limits the types of files you can open through it. For example, I use a program called Calibre portable (its an ebook management program) and as the name implies, its a portable program meant to be downloaded onto a flash drive and thus, made portable. Well. Calibre portable is an .exe and apparently this flash drive does not allow actual programs to be installed and opened. I receive an error and Im unable to use it, period. Bottom line, the SanDisk SecureAccess program is very poorly designed and if this is the same program utilized with all Sandisk flash drives then I will definitely be purchasing a different brand. Ill be keeping this only because it cost me $7 and Id be spending half of that just to ship it back. Very unhappy though.

Great portability,fast USB.

I want to buy one more

i got it for expanded storage for my smart tv so it needed to be small my tv ended up not allowing expanded storage so now i just have an extra flash drive. it was worth the price

Caveat -- I dont make huge speed demands of this thumb drive. I mainly use it as storage for reading/writing of word processing documents, with the occasional data dump of directories with their mix of files. I mainly give it high marks for being a reasonably-priced and (apparently) reliable drive that also has one of the most comfortable form factors Ive ever encountered in a drive. The design is optimally configured for ease of gripping while inserting or removing it from a port. The size also hits a sweet spot between so small, I can drop it without even noticing and so big and blocky, Im not sure I can get another drive in next to it. The real discriminator will be the drives reliability... So far, so good (fingers crossed). Ill update this review if I find out otherwise in an appropriate time frame.

I like that this item is a solid design. Meaning that its not a plastic packaging over a metal sheath for the usb plug. It came with some software on it, presumably to encrypt and secure your data... I formatted that bad boy immediately. My system only detected 7.75GB, but that might be due to the bits to bytes to megabytes conversion; I havent looked at actual bytes available, but its plenty enough for me either way. I havent done any formal speed testing, but the ol butt-o-meter could tell a nice performance increase over my sandisk 4gb drive from 2 years ago. It also worked well with my Transformer TF101 tablet as I used it to download antivirus updates, rootkit tools, and other windows software since I didnt want an infected PC to connect to my network (fixing for a friend). This thing is SMALL. *Almost* too small. But I like it. Its inconspicuous so maybe people will over look it since its mostly black and it wont get picked up by someone with sticky fingers. Id actually give 4.5 stars only for the size, but mostly because I cant make up my mind if I dont like that or if I do. Small is good, but it was a bit hard to handle while trying to pry open a usb cover on my device and insert at the same time. Could be my fat fingers though. All in all, good buy.

Its time for the backyard cook out and the block parties have the music covered

Works well for my use