Tech Review

SanDisk SDCZ28-004G-A11 4GB Ultra Cruzer Titanium Plus USB Flash Drive (Bronze)

Flash (or thumb or USB or keychain or whatever) drive reviews are usually as exciting as analog modem reviews were in 1999, but I thought I'd spend a little time writing about the Titanium+ because there's something you should know about it.

First, I'm in the Army, and even before the military banned thumb drives, I was concerned with security: What if I put something critical to the security of the United States on my thumb drive, lost the drive, and it fell into the hands of a New York Times reporter? We'd be doomed!

I was thinking of buying an encryption program and adding it to my normal thumb drive or using a free security program like Truecrypt. The first option cost money and Truecrypt seemed a little complicated.

So, while I was cruising the aisles of Staples during a faculty meeting (woops!), I saw the Sandisk Cruzer Platinum Plus for a reasonable $30.00. The box stated that it had hardware encryption and a free backup service.

Physical:

The Titanium Plus is bronze colored. Apparently, Sandisk's market researchers discovered that techies appreciate irony.

The body is metal, which is good. The mechanism is still based on a plastic part that I can see breaking with enough force. The actual innards aren't protected from water or any other element like the excellent Corsair Flash Survivor or Voyager thumb drives are. Still, it's much better to not have a removable (and losable) cap, and I guess you can't have a waterproof, retractable cap.

In essence, therefore, the Platinum Plus is only step-proof.

Corsair 8GB Flash Survivor USB 2.0 Flash Drive - CMFUSBSRVR-8GB

Corsair 8GB Flash Voyager USB 2.0 Flash Drive - CMFUSB2.0-8GB

Performance:

Speed isn't that important if you just use your thumb drive as a floppy replacement. It is, however, if you use your drive to run U3 or Portable Apps (Portable Apps is a better platform overall, and they update their files more frequently.) programs directly from your drive, as there's a dramatic difference in the opening and operation of those programs between different drives.

The Titanium Plus is very fast. A 150MB file copied onto the drive in 22.6 seconds and back onto my computer in 5.75 ticks of my digital watch. The PNY Optima Pro and Attache took 16 and 38 seconds, respectively, for the first operation.

The Flash Voyager GT's chips are at least as fast as those inside of the Titanium Plus, but the GT is more expensive and doesn't have the security software. The same two disadvantages apply to the PNY Optima Pro flash drives.

Corsair CMFUSB2.0-8GBGT 8 GB GT Flash Voyager USB Flash Drive

PNY 8GB USB 2.0 Portable Drive Enhanced for Windows Readyboost, P-FD8GBATT2-FS

Pny P-Fd04Gu20-Rf Attache Portable Usb 2.0 Flash Drive (4 Gb)

Platinum Plus advice:

Let me tell you the first thing you should not do: activate the Beinsync software that automatically back ups your drive. A good concept that, automatic backups- if you're connected to the internet- of what may be some pretty important information. The only things are that the software takes a hundred years to back something up and it makes your drive unusable. That's right, the software slows the drive down so much that it ceases to be useful for anything but staving off muggers. This isn't an isolated problem either, as I returned the first, thinking it was defective, and the problem repeated itself with the second drive.

If you try to delete it or deactivate it after you activate it, you may have to format and reinstall the whole thing like I did.

U3:

The "hardware" encryption only works if you use the U3 password. Without the password, you can't access the files on the drive. And, if you use a Mac, you're out of luck, as U3 only works on Windows PCs.

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