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The USB Flash Drive Thread

Okay, gotta get this off my chest.

Bought a brand new 4GB PNY Optima Pro Attache flash drive the other day, and it doesn't work more than 10% of the time. I chalked it up to a lemon unit, then I realized my last PNY Attache broke as well. The last one physically broke out of the casing.

My old Sandisks worked great, but they don't have the Sandisk Cruzer Micro ones with the rubber sleeves any bigger than 1GB. I need 4GB for files I use regularly at school, and our school caps the remote storage accounts at 750MB, and I do not carry my laptop everywhere.

I had a cheapie 1GB drive that worked great until it disappeared. So, I'm looking for a new flash drive. What do you have, and what do you like about it? dislikes?

You won't catch me using a PNY anything from now on.
 
Sorry Serg, looking what's out there, they're either too big and bulky (I carry in my pocket) or too fancy for what I need. Looking small and simple.

Thinking about a Sandisk Cruzer Micro, but I'm a little wary of the sliding bit.
 
The way the Macbook is laid out, I can't have anything much wider than a standard USB port to use my flash drive without unplugging my printer... Something that gets rather annoying.

Oh, i see... Yeah, the fatness of flash drive can be an issue... I've faced that few times...


Like i said, I have not heard much complaining about Sandisk. :) I don't know how good kingston flash drives but i know their memory is good in general... Might be worth looking at...
 
I use ATP, they're great. The Petitto, which I have 2 of, a 1 GB and a 2GB, is really small and works great. Check them out.

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It doesn't specifically say Mac compatible from what I can tell on the site, but I own 2 of these and only use Macs myself, so I assure you they work flawlessly with Mac.
 
I have a old small Sandisk Cruzer Micro which has lasted years (it's a 256Mb!) of pocket abuse on my keyring, capped and uncapped. It was last sold as the Cruzer Micro Skin, dunno if it's on the market anymore but it is great. I have no idea why they changed the current "Micro" design into slide-out USB jack, it just takes more space, can break more easily and doesn't even protect the jack from dirt.
 
I had one of those on the pic above, the 1GB version. It lasted for some time, but not long, something like 3-6 months. My old 256 MB iomega flash memory stick have worked flawlessly for about 3½ years and I use it quite often.

I've always been using the "safely remove hardware" function with both memory sticks. Still the Sandisk micro died unexpectedly quickly. :(
 
By the way, I don't understand who lets the silly people design these things. The worst design flaw I still see on many sticks is the attachment loop being on the cap - of course it's nice to have the cap still hanging from the lanyard, when you've dropped your memory stick god knows where. Besides, nowadays it seems to be a pain trying to find a small stick that you can hang to your keyring. I have no idea who would like to lug a huge bulky stick size of a flat marker around, when you can have one of the miniature ones.

/rant.
 
I had one of those on the pic above, the 1GB version. It lasted for some time, but not long, something like 3-6 months. My old 256 MB iomega flash memory stick have worked flawlessly for about 3½ years and I use it quite often.

I've always been using the "safely remove hardware" function with both memory sticks. Still the Sandisk micro died unexpectedly quickly. :(
I have a 2gb version of the above Sandisk model and it's still working after a year and a half. I just don't like the rubber sleeves for the body and cap so I just took them off. It's really small. Sony make some real tiny ones.
 
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Had one of those for years, was my favorite one, stood up to ANYTHING. However, the biggest one they make is a Gig. Too small for me.

I'm looking at picking up one of the current Cruzer Micro's, the ones that slide... While that feature doesn't excite me, I've had no problem with ANYTHING Sandisk in years. Use their CF in my DSLR. Their SD cards in my point and shoot, and their flash drives have worked for me in the past.