SanDisk Cruzer Micro 16 GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive SDCZ6-016G-A11
by SanDisk
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List Price: Our Price: $38.95 You Save: $31.04 (44%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $22.99 (click here) Category: CE See more product details |
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for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of SanDisk Cruzer Micro 16 GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive SDCZ6-016G-A11
Customer Review: I love it, works well with the Xbox 360
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought it mainly because I was running out of room on my 20 GB HDD (Xbox 360). Yeah, I thought about getting a bigger Hard Drive, but the next one up is the 60 GB one, and I've seen it listed as around $90-$140, then you have to buy the transfer kit, I think it's around $20, maybe less. Then I heard the transfer kit only works with certain ones, and I think it was the 60 GB one that it won't work with, but I really don't remember. After doing the math, buying these came out to be about the same amount you'd spend for upgrading, and I liked the portability.
A lot of people say it's slow, maybe it's just me, or because it's my first USB flash drive, but, it seems pretty fine to me. I use it to store just about all the DLC (downloadable content) for games, and XBL arcade titles, and play them from the flash drive, and I've never ever had any slowdown. Ranging from playing the XBL arcade title Deathspank, to the Borderlands DLC. to others that have a lot of fast-paced action, I've never had a problem. When I download something, like a DLC pack or an arcade game to the Flash Drive, it takes about the same amount of time it would to the HDD, actually, it seems the same. It's actually the glowing orange light on the device that is really the only complaint, lol (albeit, a very minor one, others have mentioned it too). It slowly dims out then comes back on, pretty much all the time. Sometimes it flashes steadily, mainly if you're using it, like what I do, playing DLC or arcade titles from it, but I don't think it flashes constantly non-stop, just here and there.
I'm actually getting low on room again, all this damn DLC, so I was checking out the price and thought, I never put up a review, so maybe I should have (I bought it back on July 8th). Oh, if you're transferring something from the HDD to the flash drive, it can take a little bit, especially if it's a GB or more, so I guess the writing speed might be slightly below average, I dunno, I'm not too versed on that sort of thing. For example, I just moved the Bioshock DLC Minerva's Den over to the USB from the HDD, that is 1GB, I think it took like 5 min.? I'm guessing somewhat, might of been just under 5 min.
Keep in mind, just like with all HDD's and drives (I guess all), you actually get less storage space than what it says, for system stuff. I think the amount of space you get is 14.2GB, same with the 360 HDD that's a 20GB, you really only get just over 16GB. For $34, I think it's pretty good, but there are times I see the price drop a few bucks, the lowest I've seen it was $28, but I'm not sure if it was through a seller offering free shipping (I was looking through my wishlist and it caught my eye), if so, then you'd save $6, if not, you might save like $2, lol.
Finally, yes, Microsoft says this is below specs, or recommendations or whatever, and that's because they want you to buy their USB flash drive, which I might add is also 16GB but is around $65 (though I see it here @ Amazon for $58, still..). Don't get that one, you're wasting money, you can get 2 of these for nearly the same price of one "Official" Xbox one. Trust me, I used to be the kind of person who was all about buying the 1st party (Nintendo, Microsoft, Sony) memory cards and other stuff, so I was a bit hesitant on getting this, because I wasn't sure if it would work with the 360, but I read the reviews and a few others said it works fine with it, so I'm saying the same thing. Don't get the Microsoft one, get this one. If you're not using it for the 360, I'd still recommend it, highly.
Customer Review: Great Item but sketchy business tactics
Summary: 5 Stars
I already have one of these and they are fantastic with tons of storage for videos, pics. . . . Also, I paid alot more than $0.01 for my original drive. That being said. . .
Yesterday I wrote:
I ordered 2 of these to give as gifts @ $0.01 each + shipping only to find out, like others, that it would not be honored by either Digital Media Source nor Amazon. It's a shame that there has been only a quick one-sentence email from Amazon playing big brother and sticking up for Digital Media Source saying order was cancelled. The price was jumping around all day - I thought it was some cool Black Friday promotion but instead it was only a farce. Thanks for helping me miss out on other Black Friday flash drive deals but hey - at least you got a bunch of extra webpage hits from your deceit.
Today, following the supposed apology/explanation/blame from Gene at Digital Media Source, I write:
Gene, President of Digital Media Source, I apologize for being such a nimrod to actually try and purchase this item at $0.01 because, according to you "Obvously any rational buyer would realize a price of .01 on a $35 item must be some sort of mistake." Forgive me for thinking there was a deal to be had on, of all days, Black Friday. I am so utterly stupid to think that a company might be selling an item at a ridiculously enticing price. It would be asinine for a company try to increase hits to their website by offering an out-of-control deal on an item. Accept my apology for obviously (yes, you did spell obviously wrong in your formal business semi-apology/blame-Amazon letter) not being a rational buyer (also, please forgive the other 1749 buyers)! I mean Ebay is selling Corvettes, digital cameras, golf club sets, plasma tvs... for $1 with FREE SHIPPING - $1 must be the fair-market value of those items because, according to you, selling something for less than it costs to buy would be unheard of, right?!?!?!?!?
Sorry for all of this - I hate the blame game. Someone needs to step-up and apologize and say "It was my fault" and not blame others and then blame the customer for being stupid enough to try and buy an item at an unbelievable price.
If it is Amazon's fault then we'll await their statement but if it's Gene's fault then stop blaming Amazon and the customer.
Oh, and one more thing: Tools--> Spelling and Grammar. It works wonders!
Customer Review: Speedy, large storage, physically small
Summary: 5 Stars
One visible feature that makes this drive different is the absence of a cap. The part that plugs into your computer's USB port slides in and out of the protective casing and you ergonomically control it with your thumb. This makes this drive 'smaller' which may or may not be a good thing if you misplace it :) This and its good I/O speed make me love this Cruiser but anyone uncomfortable with removing preinstalled software from the drive and or formatting it should look elsewhere (see the 'warning' paragraph).
Here are the positives/negatives below.
+ Large capacity: not the largest but 16GB is not too bad. It can easily hold TWO movies ripped to the highest DVD settings, menus, subtitles, audio tracks and extra features included.
+ Speedy: benchmarked by me at 128 Mbit/s (16MB/s) reading large media files when formatted as FAT32 with 64KB clusters.
+ Small physical size: can be attached to a key ring.
- Moving parts: the 'retractable' feature is nice but one thing that I used to like about thumb drives was 'no moving parts' which gave me more peace of mind when trusting them with important data.
- Annoyingly bright, orangey pulsating light: there's no way to turn it off.
- Obsolete SanDisk's U3 Launchpad app pre-installed and not easy to remove.
I will award this drive 5 stars mostly for its good I/O speed and for its storage capacity. It's not the 'perfect' USB drive - there are larger, speedier drives and see the 'minuses' listed above but its good features are good enough to make me 'love it' which is Amazon's standard for 5 stars.
NOTE:
The drive comes with SanDisk's U3 Launchpad installed. This is an 'old' technology meant to facilitate the launching of Windows apps of a flash drive. It allowed U3-compliant apps to temporarily write to your computer's registry... probably not a well-thought method. SanDisk considers U3 'dead' at this time but you are likely to find the 'Launchpad' on the USB drive. The best way to completely remove it is via a SanDisk-supplied tool - I will post a comment with the URL. Once that is done, Windows 7 allowed me to format the drive as either FAT32, NTFS or exFAT.
Customer Review: Excellent value for a 16-gig flash drive
Summary: 5 Stars
I agree that the U3 software is not for everyone. If you seek a flash drive for storing media, e.g., music and/or photographs, then you can easily disable the U3 software upon inserting it into a USB drive. (The U3 software may be restored should you decide that you need it at a later time.)
That being said, having access to a frequently used software application, e.g., Mozilla Firefox, and preserving the manner in which you have configured it is extremely nice, especially if you spend time working on different computers. Your preferences, shortcuts, and bookmarked Web sites all remain in tact.
My jaw dropped when I found this particular item on Amazon. For the past three years, I have been using a 4GB SanDisk Cruzer. I have been repeatedly considered purchasing a larger Cruzer but have been reluctant to do so because of the prices that major retailers, e.g., Best Buy and Office Depot, command for 8GB and 16GB models. A quick check of several Web sites confirmed my suspicions: Amazon's price of $34.95 (as of this review) is a steal when compared to the sites of said major retailers, who sell the exact same Cruzer for $79.99 or more.
Upon opening the Cruzer's shipping materials, I suspected that the flash drive might be counterfeit as the plastic packaging seemed to be more minimal in nature that what I expected. It also noticed subtle differences between my 4GB model and this new 16GB model.
Fearing that I may have purchased a counterfeit Cruzer, I visited an Office Depot in order to compare the flash drive that I had received versus the ones being sold at a brick-and-mortar store. Sure enough, SanDisk has changed the manner in which it packages its flash drives in order to use as little packaging as possible. My few other misgivings were addressed, too, one of which concerned the SanDisk logo on the packaging. (Apparently, SanDisk has refreshed its corporate logo a bit.)
In summary, I cannot believe that I was able to purchase a bonafide 16GB SanDisk Cruzer for approximately half of what I would spend elsewhere. If you are in need of a flash drive, I would not hesitate to recommend this SanDisk model, as well as this seller.
Customer Review: Great flash drive!
Summary: 5 Stars
At first I was dismayed that there was U3 software preinstalled on the drive. Fortunately I was able to remove it through its own deinstallation software. I personally think U3 gets in the way so it got the axe.
I then reformatted the drive then encrypted it using [...], some excellent on-the-fly data encryption software, and reformatted the mounted drive. After all, if you lose your flash drive you don't want just anyone to access the stuff on it, right? So now I have an encrypted+compressed NTFS-based flash drive
With all of the crypto and compression going on the drive was fast enough loading and saving files. And since memory prices keep going down it makes sense to have at least a nice safe spot for your very important files. So I wear my flash drive with my company's keycard.
Also it looks as though they upgraded some of the hardware within the drive. I have a much older 1GB model of the SanDisk. It too glowed orange but only turned its LED off if files were being accessed to and from the drive. On the newer 16GB model the drive's very bright orange LED always flashes on and off in a continuous pattern. But, when the drive isn't accessed, the drive's LED slowly fades on then off, like it has a heartbeat. It's not much in the way of anything that affects functionality but it's damn cool.
Anyway, kudos to SanDisk for the built-in U3 deinstallation software. Now if SanDisk's marketing department and use REAL GiB measurements instead of braindead base-10 "GB" instead of blaming the lack of extra space on "hidden" or obscure parts of the drive (the problem is base-10 math being used instead of base-2 sizing) I'd be even happier than I am now. And I am quite happy. :-)