The Sandisk Cruzer Titanium Thumbdrive

Product: The Sandisk Cruzer Titanium USB 2.0 Thumbdrive
Author: Andrew Herdrich
Date Published: 3/23/05
Price: $61.31 + $4.81 S/H
Purchased at: Newegg.com

Introduction

One area of recent rapid market growth has been the mobile storage industry, from portable hard drive enclosures, and floppy replacements to thumbdrives. In recent years, thumbdrives have moved from a tiny corner of the market to the mainstream, and are now highly desirable for their portability, speed, and above all, convenience. Until recently, however, users have had to worry about whether their thumbdrives will survive vibration, shock, being dropped repeatedly, and in some cases, crushed.

This problem has prompted many innovative solutions from many different companies, including molding the electronics of the thumbdrive into a solid plastic casing, and creating a retractable USB port. While these solutions have worked reasonably well, the chances of a plastic casing surviving the weight of a car, for instance, are slim.

One company, Sandisk, realized these durability problems, and created a specific thumbdrive to solve the problem. Sandisk already has an wide array of thumbdrives and capacities available, from the Cruzer, which offers reasonable storage and appearance to the Cruzer mini, which sacrifices cost-effectiveness and capacity to minimize size. With their newest product, the Cruzer Titanium, Sandisk takes a metaphorical stab at solving the extreme durability problem once and for all. This thumbdrive is currently available in 512Mb, 1Gb and 2Gb sizes, and features both a retractable USB 2.0 interface and a full titanium shell, which should protect it from shock, vibration, and most importantly, crushing weight. The company claims that the shell will withstand 2,000lbs of force. We'll put this to the test later; first some specifications:

Features and Specifications

First Impressions

Our first impressions of this thumbdrive were rather good. The drive feels heavy and well built, and looks like it could take a beating. As many other people have stated, getting the small metal loop onto the thumbdrive can be a difficult process, which in our case took about 10 minutes. The drive's shiny titanium case sets it apart from others, and is virtually impossible to scratch. The drive came partitioned with the FAT file system, and showed an actual capacity, in our case, of 493Mb. Even after hours of use, the thumbdrive was only mildly warm to the touch.

Photos are included below.

Test Setup

To put this enclosure to the test, we’ll be using the following test setup:

MSI NEO2-FIS2R i875P Motherboard, 8 USB 2.0 Ports
P4 “C” Northwood 2.8Ghz @ 3.36Ghz, 240Mhz FSB
1024Mb OCZ Performance Series PC-3200 DDR
WD Raptor 10000RPM 8Mb Cache 74Gb System Drive

The thumbdrive's data transfer rates will be measured using the following methods:

HD Tach 2.70
Fixed File Size Transfer Tests
SiSoft Sandra 2004 SP1

Fixed file size transfer tests were performed by copying a single RAR file the exact size of the drive to it, then calculating the average speed.

Benchmarks

Now for some benchmark numbers. The first test was HD Tach 2.70. This version of the program easily recognized the thumbdrive.

Conclusion

This thumbdrive seems to have finally addressed one of the biggest remaining problems concerning thumbdrives- extreme durability. This thing survived everything we tried, including stepping on it, dropping it literally hundreds of times, clamping it in a vise, and running it over with a 3000lb car, with only minor case deformation. This should allow users to finally stop worrying about whether their data will survive falling out of a window 10 stories high, for instance. The drive also features high read and write speeds, and you can literally fill the drive with data in 40 seconds via USB 2.0. The drive also comes with a decent amount of accessories, and the included software allows users to encrypt the drive's contents and keep files synchronized across multiple computers fairly easily. To top it all off, the drive looks good too with its polished titanium shell. The only downside we could come up with is the drive's cost, which is quite a bit higher than most, but in this case, you get what you pay for. If you're looking for a thumbdrive that will survive just about anything you can throw at it, and is probably bulletproof, try this one.

PROs

Small
Lightweight
Tough
Good looks
Tons of space
Easy to use
Blue status LED
Bootable!

CONs

Fairly high price