EmailBest Reviewed
USB Flash Drives
- Best USB flash drive Corsair Flash Voyager *Est. $40
- Most durable USB flash drive Corsair Flash Survivor *Est. $40
- USB flash drive with U3 SanDisk Ultra Cruzer Titanium *Est. $30
- Most secure flash drive IronKey Secure *Est. $140
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USB flash drive with U3
- Transports applications as well as data
- Durable case
- Works with Windows, Mac, Linux
- Inexpensive
- Retractable plug (there's no cap)
- U3 technology being replaced
March 2009. Reviews say the SanDisk Cruzer Titanium is the best value for a USB flash drive equipped with U3 capability, which allows you to run applications as well as store data. That means you can work within the USB drive without leaving traces of your activity on the host computer. And it's very durable. One reviewer drove a car over it, cracking the casing slightly but doing no damage to the data, although the retractable plug can be vulnerable. U3 is being phased out in favor of the StartKey technology. If you don't need to transport applications, reviews suggest the Corsair Flash Voyager (*est. $40 for 8 GB) as a durable basic drive with encryption.
We found the best reviews for the SanDisk Ultra Cruzer Titanium at TrustedReviews.com and TomsHardware.com, where testing is thorough and unbiased, and coverage is a couple years fresher than at EverythingUSB.com and CNET. CNET, however, features a useful video review and about 130 user reviews, which are about half as many as can be found at Amazon.com, but still a significant sampling. Note that this drive used to be called the SanDisk Cruzer Titanium; SanDisk has added the "Ultra" moniker, but the drive itself is unchanged.
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Our Sources
The U.K.'s Trusted Reviews gives an Editors Choice award to the SanDisk Cruzer Titanium U3's 2 GB version, and it has broad enough coverage of flash drives that the award is meaningful. Reviewer Benny Har-Even says the Cruzer is "compact, rugged, fast and very affordable... really nothing here to find fault with."
Review: SanDisk Cruzer Titanium U3 USB Flash Drive, Benny Har-Even, Oct. 3, 2006
Schmid and Veltze test 12 drives, assessing access time, read-transfer and write-transfer capabilities, including the SanDisk Cruzer Titanium. It gets the highest praise for its "nice performance, great design and finish, and a bunch of software features."
Review: Summer 2006 Memory Stick Fashion Show, Patrick Schmid and Sebastian Veltze, Aug. 16, 2006
This dated review says the SanDisk Cruzer Titanium is the fastest flash drive tested, although not as fast as the manufacturer claims. It's called "stylish" with good features, including encryption, the review says. There are also about a dozen mostly positive user reviews.
Review: SanDisk Cruzer Titanium, Editors of EverythingUSB.com, Aug. 30, 2004
4. CNET
Justin Jaffe gives the SanDisk an Editors Choice award, saying there's no downside and some good applications. In the accompanying video, he drives a car over it, cracking the case a little but not hurting the data. There are also about 130 user reviews here, giving it a middling average score.
Review: SanDisk Cruzer Titanium (512MB, silver), Justin Jaffe, June 24, 2004
5. Amazon.com
More than 250 owners give the SanDisk Cruzer Titanium a very high average score, with only about 10 percent expressing serious dissatisfaction. Some complaints are from users who did not know it was incompatible with Mac and with Windows Vista (no longer the case).
Review: SanDisk 4GB Cruzer Titanium USB Flash Drive with U3, Contributors to Amazon.com
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