I've been impressed with the size and speed of the drive so far, and it works great as a keychain, but the drive itself gets VERY hot and is difficult to touch, especially closer to the port. I would recommend gripping the back of the drive near the plastic loop when removing the drive from your computer. Just thought I would warn everyone since I could see getting burned.
Overall this is a great flash drive, it gets around 140MBs read and 40MBs write (Slightly slower than the 64GB version). It's not quite as fast as the SanDisk extreme version but it's the fastest metal drive I've found, you can see a benchmark in the attached image.
The metal design seems sturdy and should hopefully hold up to being thrown around with my keys. My only complaint would be that the drive is part metal (silver portion) and the key ring part is plastic (black/grey portion in picture). I was hoping it would be all metal but the plastic key ring seems sturdy and it should hold up over time. One other note is that the drive can get very warm when doing large transfers, it's to be expected for a small metal drive like this but it's worth mentioning.
I run Hyper-V on my Windows 10 laptop that has an SSD with 16GB RAM and Core i7 processor. I keep my WIndows 2012R2 VHDX's on the SanDisk USB 3.0 Flas Drive for SSD performance on my Hyper-V servers! It gets a little warm, within spec they say, but to keep it cool I stuck some heatsinks for a Rasp-Pi on it. Since the case is metal, heat transfer is excellent and I no longer worry about the temp of my external, thumb-sized SSD!
UPDATE TWO YEARS LATER (8/2018): I have been using this flash drive on a daily basis, attached to my keys, and it's still working great. Goes in and out of my pocket with a handful of keys. 100% satisfied with it and impressed with its durability.
I bought this 128GB drive because I needed more storage. I had a Silicon Power 64GB Jewel J80 USB 3.0 Flash Drive, Titanium (SP064GBUF3J80V1T) which has held up well but it maxes out at 64GB. The Silicon Power is all metal. I was a little wary of this one's plastic loop to attach it to my keyring but it's actually thick and seems strong. I was not exactly clear on how it fit on a keyring but it does! It's also actually smaller than the Silicon Power one! How do they do it???
As for speed, it is plenty fast enough on my USB 3.0 equipped laptop and I don't notice it taking any more time than my last drive did on the USB 2.0 equipped classroom computers. How's that for a completely subjective analysis? The whole reason I needed a larger drive was to carry class movies to class. It handles the large files just as well as the Silicon Power did.
I've been using it for a week on a keyring with several big keys. If it fails on me, I'll be back on here to knock stars off. If you're reading it with 5 stars, it means it's still holding strong!
(photos show its size and I still have the Silicon Power one on my key ring for comparison; it's next to the SanDisk)
Overall very happy with the capacity and performance of this tiny thumb drive especially at this price. Bought a Si Power 128 GB sometime last year and this one's performance is just way better. The SiPower drive (also USB3) was not very responsive, always need to wait for a couple of seconds before it responded, even when what I did was opening a folder on the thumb drive. But for SanDisk Ultra Flair, I don't see this issue at all! Was thinking that it might be due to the 128GB but loos like it's just some thumb drive is just not that responsive.
Have included a picture for relative size comparison among SiPower, Sandisk Extreme and Ultra Flair. As mentioned by some ppl it's warm after use but I don't think take that as an issue with this drive as everything is packed into such a tiny thing.
Feature Product
- High Speed USB 3.0 performance
- Transfer to drive faster up to 15X faster than standard USB 2.0 drives
- Sleek, durable metal casing
- Easy-to-use password protection for your private files
- 5-year limited warranty
Description
The SanDisk Ultra Flair USB 3.0 flash drive moves your files fast. Spend less time waiting to transfer files and enjoy high-speed USB 3.0 performance of up to 130MB/s. Transfer a fulllength movie to the drive faster than standard USB 2.0 drives. Its durable and sleek metal casing is tough enough to handle knocks with style. And, with password protection, you can rest assured that your private files stay private. Help secure files in style with the SanDisk Ultra Flair USB 3.0 flash drive.
I just needed more space, this delivered. Also, the price was amazing. Weird to think I own a flash drive with the same amount of memory as some modern ultrabooks offer as a base.
Pros:
-This thing is small. I was expecting something like 2.25in x 11/16thin, you know classic thumb drive small but this is more like 1.75in x 7/16th just small enough for a keyring but not too small that it's novel.
-No flashing LEDs, sorry, I hate flashing LEDs on thumb drives. They're always annoyingly bright and I do a lot of large file transferring at night, so I don't need it illuminating the whole bedroom/living room while it's transferring.
Cons:
-While this is easily fixable, this thing came out of the box with FAT32 formatting on it. What a weird choice for SanDisk to choose. I formatted it to NTFS. The 128GB Thumbnail Drive also was FAT32 formatted, same company and bought at the same time. The quick reason why it's annoying is that FAT32 has a max per-file size of 4GB. The stuff I was putting on to this drive was greater than 4GB, not all of it, but when you're transferring 200+GB to it at once in about 40,000 files. It gets annoying trying to guess where the 4+GB files are hiding.
As I said, I transferred 200+GB of roms and emulators to this thumb drive, took about 3-4 continuous, uninterrupted hrs to do so, I didn't notice it getting extremely hot during that long time, as others have warned about. It got "warm" but not WARM, like you could feel it working, Maybe 70 degrees F,
I like it, most likely will buy another one. I bought this one for my roms and emulators. The next 256GB one will be for all my books, pdfs, documents since that too is about 200GB of files I'm trying to get away from platter storage systems due to their fragility. The price is great for so much storage in such a compact space.
I've had this drive for a while now and I've not been disappointed by performance. Transfers and access speeds are quite good for a drive of this size. The encryption software that is supplied on the drive is simple and effective at protecting sensitive data. It keeps the items you want from being accessed without a password.
There are a couple of cons for this device. It does run warm but it's not hot or to the point of causing burns. At the time of my purchase, it also did not come with any type of cap to cover the connection point. That's not a big deal, I just placed a USB plastic cap from another device. I didn't want to get dust or other particles inside. Overall, I'm still satisfied with the purchase. Great deal from a trusted name in storage.
This thumb drive has performed as expected for a thumb drive. I used the windows media tools to create a bootable windows 10 USB drive and it worked great with this thumb drive. I found the USB 3.0 to be super useful for installing windows on machines.
Dimensions of the thumb drive can be seen in the photos I have uploaded below. It is quite a small thumb drive.
Included is simply a 32GB USB 3.0 thumb drive. On the drive is some Sandisk software for encryption etc. I junked this software so I do not know if it would prove to be useful or not.
Pros:
*High capacity
*High speed data transfer
*Small easy to carry
Cons:
*None
Additional Considerations:
Be aware of the size of this drive and that it is a USB 3.0 device. To utilize the full speed during data transfer make sure to plug this drive into a blue USB 3.0 spot.
Overall: 5/5 stars (>=.5 rounds up, <.5 rounds down) => 5 stars
If you have any further questions regarding the product in my review please leave a comment below and I will get back to you as soon as possible.
Bought 2 of these in succession— one works flawlessly and the other had slightly reduced performance (docked 1 star for that). The slightly reduced performance one is being used as a very compact backup so that compromise is not a big deal but of course I'd rather have both working flawlessly. Performance numbers in AmorphousDiskMark (Mac) of the good one:
Sequential Read: 156 MB/sec
Sequential Write: 65.8 MB/sec
4K Random Read: 7.5 MB/sec
4K Random Write: 2.0 MB/sec
Compared to the numbers for the 128GB Sandisk Ultra Flair:
Sequential Read: 156 MB/sec
Sequential Write: 106 MB/sec
4K Random Read: 4.1 MB/sec
4K Random Write: 3.1 MB/sec
So the 256MB has lower Sequential Read and Write, which is not as good if you are using this for file transfers but it has higher 4K Random Read which is better for using as an external boot disk, which happens to be what I use my 128MB for. Still these numbers are about as good as you'll find in this very small form factor and the big difference between this and the ultra small form factor drives (Sandisk Ultra Fit, which I also have) is that it does NOT overheat and then slow down to a crawl.
Now this drive does get hot (which some people have complained about) when using it for big data transfers and of course that's what you'll be using it for with 256 GB of storage, but it's supposed to and that's why it has an exposed metal cover, to dissipate that heat. And it does it effectively as neither of mine slow down when under heavy use, very unlike my 128GB Ultra Fit which slows to zero for about 2/3rds of any data transfer you might attempt. That one sits on my desk unused with the exception that I swiped it's USB protective cap to use on the Ultra Flair. The Ultra Flair works as advertised with no slowdowns. I'm happy with mine and if you get one which doesn't perform to expectations, send it back for a good one.
I ordered a couple of these because of their size and speed plus the reputation that SanDisk has come to be known for. I was not disappointed with my purchase. The flash drive is very compact and can easily be carried on key chain or lanyard. The speed of the 3.0 is good also, my times for transfer or copying of files has been reduced by a good 70%-80%. I will say this however, I have noticed that when I am transfer/copying larger files of say 15gigs or better that the body of the flash drive does become quite warm to the touch. This surprised me the first time I used it cause my other flash drives don't get this way, then again my other flash drive are also a plastic body... this one is either aluminum or stainless steel. The only thing I would have liked to have been included or made part of this unit is to have a cap for the working end, don't really like having it left exposed. I just make sure that before installing into usb that I check that nothing by some chance has fallen into open slot on flash drive. Well with that little annoyance being said I would still recommend this unit for the ease of carry and speed of file transfer.
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