SanDisk Cruzer Contour 8 GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive SDCZ8-8192-A75
by SanDisk
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Our Price: $57.99 Availability: Usually ships in 3-5 weeks Buy Used: from $14.18 (click here) Category: CE See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of SanDisk Cruzer Contour 8 GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive SDCZ8-8192-A75
Customer Review: Good innards, bad shell
Summary: 2 Stars
A fairly good usb drive in terms of read / write speeds, but I just cant get past the outer shell of this one.
It's meant to look pretty and have sort of a switchblade feel - you retract the black portion about 1/2" then return it to the starting position to get the connector out. When done you push it forward 1/2" past the starting position then back. During the process there is a little flap that covers the connector when it is recessed.
The motion isn't very smooth, and it feels like there are multiple points of failure on this drive. Also because you have to move the slider in the correct order if it jammed in the wrong spot it could be a real pain to fix.
It works well as a USB drive, but if there is another one for the same price I'd suggest it over this one.
Customer Review: Plastic!
Summary: 2 Stars
Got the SanDisk Titanium 2 & 4GB Cruzer. Needed more storage and went with the 8GB Contour. Was waiting for it since December of 06 and not happy about SanDisk changing the Feb or March release date by two months. Thought they had their reasons and I would wait for their quality product. Simply, this device isn't meant for heavy use. The black part in the picture is thin plastic. As you push on it to open and close the drive, you can feel a little give in the plastic. It comes with a nice protective case but, for the price, I was expecting something like their Titanium Cruzers. Something I can toss in my pocket with change or keys and not worry about. As for my being "happy" with it, I'm looking to see who has an 8GB or larger which doesn't feel as brittle.Customer Review: Removing U3 may reduce write speeds
Summary: 1 Stars
I bought this flash drive primarily for its write speed. I'd rather not have U3 installed as the emulated CDROM drive spawns an Autorun dialog and interferes with the operation of my CD burning software (Nero).
When I got the drive I immediately removed U3. After a while I noticed that the write speed in Windows Explorer never exceeded 14MB/s, even with large files. As I had paid a price premium for Sandisk's `flagship' flash drive I investigated and found that when U3 is installed Windows reports write speed of around 17MB/s, but when U3 is removed the write speed dropped to ~14MB/s.
I contacted Sandisk about this (it took a week for the first reply). After a few exchanges, including using benchmarking software from the Sandisk support site to confirm my finding, the tech support conversation ended with this reply:
"With U3, it can be removed like you have done or prevent it from auto running as previously mentioned. With the U3 partition recognized as a disc, it can create issues with software such as Nero, Roxio and other ROM software.
"Unfortunately the Contour's speed is optimized when using U3. When U3 is removed, you may experience a drop in the transfer rate of data to the flash drive. The testing on this device was done with U3 installed and it does optimize the speed of the device. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused."
Apparently removing U3 may reduce the write speed of the drive, in my case by 3 MB/s. There does not seem to be any warning about this on the product page or the U3 page of the Sandisk website. As far as I knew U3 was an optional feature and its removal would not incur a performance penalty. To enjoy the superior performance I paid for I have to keep an annoying feature that interferes with some of the software I use (I have to unplug the drive to burn a DVD). I'm not in the US right now. For the cost of sending the drive back (Sandisk does not think the drive is defective anyway) I can buy a 4 GB drive that sports ~14MB/s write speed with large files.
I'm very dissatisfied with this purchase.
Customer Review: Not compatible with Mac OS X or Linux
Summary: 1 Stars
Warning: this product is in fact not compatible with Max OS X or Linux. It requires access to a computer running windows at least once to get rid of the U3 "partition". After that has been removed it will be compatible and so far (after a couple of days use) seems to work fine.
It is rather big and will certainly not fit in all USB ports because of it.
SanDisk customer service is also not very good (they did not read my email before replying to it, and force you to use their unpleasant message system).
UPDATE: turns out sandisk has a mac removal tool, but they won't put it on their webpage, customer support tells me they will email it to anyone who requests. I have no information on tools for Linux.
Customer Review: SanDisk 8GB Cruzer Contour USB Drive (retail Package)
Summary: 1 Stars
Too good to be true. This company canceled my order without any good explanation. Probably because it was a 8 gb key for less than $30. I even went to their website to make sure the price was correct and they had it listed on their website as well for less than $30. I will not buy from this company at all in the future. It was available and in stock and Amazon had a disclaimer that this was sold directly through PC Universe and not Amazon. I should have known better. Thought I got the deal of a century. I saw bad reviews from this company and should have known better too.