Wow! That's a wicked fast flash drive! A review of the SanDisk Extreme 64GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive with Speed up to 245MB/s-SDCZ80-064G-GAM46
I ordered SanDisk Extreme 64GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive based recommendations and reviews I saw in various places on the web. The typical comment was that this particular series of flash drives are so fast that it is like having a solid state drive (SSD) in the form of a USB stick and reasonably priced. In laymen's terms, it's a seriously fast drive and well-priced, especially when considering its level of performance. I'd been wanting a high capacity USB 3.0 flash drive for a very long time to transfer data between several machines and/or use as an emergency boot drive for my Macs but always held off due to cost. The price of the flash drive always seemed too high in comparison to purchasing a low capacity SSD and installing it in a bus-powered enclosure. Recently, Amazon.com had a sale on SanDisk memory products. This became an opportunity to not only get the SanDisk Extreme USB 3.0 flash drive that was so highly praised at a reasonable price but also to get a 64 GB drive instead of a 32GB model.
Review summary:
The SanDisk Extreme 64GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive with Speed up to 245MB/s-SDCZ80-064G-GAM46 is incredibly fast! I'm neither a computer expert and nor do I have benchmarking software to measure the actual speed of the drive in megabytes per millisecond but can say without a doubt copying gigs of files to and from it takes a few seconds to a few minutes under USB 3.0, depending on the quantity and type of data involved. TheSanDisk Extreme is fast even under USB 2.0. It truly feels like an SSD on a stick! One key difference between this model and other USB flash drives (all USB 2.0 models and many USB 3.0 models) is that it's fast enough for me to use as a boot drive for my Macs. That was one of my goals and the SanDisk Extreme achieved and exceeded my expectations in this regard.
My only concerns are the drive feels lightweight and has a slider mechanism for its USB interface and may have compatibility issues with an Inateck USB 3.0 PCIe card. That means the drive will require a touch of TLC when using it. However, these are minor issues in my opinion and the sheer performance of the drive vastly outweighs them. They aren't even enough of a concern for me to subtract a star from the review. The flash drive is that awesome! I plan to buy a slew of these drives to give as gifts to friends and family, even if their machines only have USB 2.0. They'll still benefit from the performance of this particular drive. It's much faster than other USB 3.0 flash drives and it'll blow away any flash drive that has just USB 2.0. That and the USB 3.0 interface and sheer performance future proofs the drive for use with new (or newer) machines that have USB 3.0 built into them.
Full review:
The SanDisk Extreme 64GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive ships in blister pack, which should come as no surprise. Flash drives are very small and it's common to see them for sale in blister packs or in bulk packaging. It's easy enough to open blister packs but I still find them annoying. What happens if you must return an item you've removed from one? It makes me feel a little funny on those rare occasions Ive had to try and close a blister pack and return the goods. Still, it's a flash drive and I didn't expect any issues.
In my experience, the typical USB flash drive is about 1.5" to 2" long, .5" wide and a bit thicker than a pencil. Some are much smaller, though. I have a Patriot Axle 32Gb drive that is about an 1" long, .5" wide and a bit thicker than a pencil. The San Disk Extreme is about the same width and thickness as the Patriot Axle but more than twice as long. Think average in size. Not too big, not too small, and easy to hold. The Sandisk Extreme is lightweight and made entirely of what feels like a lighter weight plastic except for its USB interface. As a result, the SanDisk Extreme gives the impression that it will crack when dropped one time too many. However, I wouldn't worry too much about durability. I've owned a slew of USB flash drives and I've yet to have any of them break due to dropping and/or similar accidents. I can't say the same about slider mechanisms. I've had the slide mechanism break on a number of drives due to general wear and tear and/or poor build quality.
The SanDisk Extreme has a loop on one end for use with a lanyard or keyring and a blue LED that lights up when it's in use. Kudos to SanDisk for making the loop large enough to make hooking a lanyard or keychain to it super easy but not so large that it appears out of place on the drive. The size is just right. The Patriot Axle, in contrast, has holes for a lanyard but they are tiny, making connecting it extremely difficult. You couldn't attach a keyring to it at all. The Sandisk Extreme is the first flash drive I've owned that has an LED and it's a welcome feature. The LED makes it feel less like a flash drive and more like a bus-powered portable hard disk drive. The LED also makes the drive more visible so you're less inclined to leave it connected to the computer accidentally. I've done that with other drives on all too many occasions.
Flash drives are small devices and the capacity and other useful info is sometimes difficult to read and/or not even listed on them. The Patriot Axle is a good example. The name Patriot is easy to read, its capacity is in smaller text but still easy enough to read but it doesn't say if the drive is USB 1.1, 2.0 or 3.0. A Micro Center generic USB flash drive has just the words Micro Center on it. No capacity info, nothing. I know its capacity only because I slapped a label on it. I don't know if it's USB 1.1 or 2.0. The info on the SanDisk Extreme is large and easy to read. There is no mistaking the make, model, capacity and type of USB. This saves me the trouble of having to label it accordingly.
SanDisk uses a slide mechanism to move the USB male end out of the case. Push the slide down slightly and move it with your thumb and the USB end pops out and locks in place. Push the slide down and move it in the opposite direction with your thumb and the USB end slips back into the case. Easy. And, no worries. The slide locks in place, something I didn't notice the first time I used the drive. So, if the USB end is out and ready for use, pushing it into the USB port on your computer won't make it slip back into the case. At least as long as you don't push down on the side while connect it. That's an improvement over the slide mechanisms of other flash drives I've used over the years.
I can't say I'm a big fan of slide mechanisms. In my experience, they tend to be on the fragile side. I've tossed a couple of flash drives because the slide mechanism broke after a while. On the other hand, they do have their place. The design allows the USB end to be tucked into the case of the drive when you're not using it. A slide system also means there is no concern about loosing the cap that covers the USB end. For what it's worth, I've dealt with lost end caps far more often than broken slide mechanisms. So, I don't think it's a major concern.
All that said, the reason I purchased this drive was performance. Up until now, I've only used flash drives with USB 1.1 and USB 2.0. And, they're slow. USB 1.1 flash drives were dreadfully slow. USB 2.0 flash drives are a huge improvement over USB 1.1 models but they're still awfully slow. The SanDisk Extreme with USB 3.0, on the other hand, is lightning fast! Far faster than I expected, despite the reviews I read about the drive.
To test the speed of the SanDisk Extreme, I used the drive with my office's Mac Pro 2.8 GHz Quad Core Intel Xeon (Early 2008) with an internal solid state drive as its boot drive, internal hard disk drives as data, clone and backup drives, 6 gigs of RAM, built-in USB 2.0 and an Inateck USB 3.0 PCI-E card and my Early 2013 Macbook Pro 2.8 GHz Quad Core i7 with an internal SSD, 16 gigs of RAM and built-in USB 3.0. Here are the results of some of my tests.
On my Office's Mac Pro:
I copied 10.41 GB of movies from one of the tower's internal Western Digital Caviar Black 7200 rpm hard disk drives to the SanDisk Extreme USB 3.0 flash drive which was connected to the computer's Inateck USB 3.0 card in 2 minutes 12 seconds. Fast! Very very fast!
The same data copied from the Western Digital Caviar Black hard disk drive to the SanDisk Extreme USB 3.0 flash drive plugged into one of the Mac Pro's built-in USB 2.0 ports took 5 minutes 8 seconds.
That was from an internal data drive. The Mac Pro's primary boot drive is an SSD.
Copying the same data from the SanDisk Extreme plugged into the Inateck USB 3.0 card to the internal SSD of the tower took 2 minutes and 18 seconds
Copying the data from the SSD back to the flash drive 1 minute 9 seconds.
That's on the Mac Pro. Keep in mind, this is a modestly upgraded computer that is nearly 7 years old.
However, and it's an important however, is the drive had some issues when connected to the Inateck USB 3.0 PCI-E card. On the Mac Pro, it took a couple of tries to perform the copy tests when the Sandisk Extreme was connected to the Inateck USB 3.0 PCI-E card. The flash drive unmounted during the copies on a couple of occasions. I suspect the source of the problem is the Inateck USB 3.0 PCI-E card since this behavior only appears when the SanDisk Extreme is connected to it. The SanDisk had no trouble whatsoever when connected directly to the Mac Pro's USB 2.0 ports.
I'm not sure if it is an incompatibility between the SanDiesk Extreme and the card or the design of the card itself. Unlike some USB 3.0 cards, the Inateck card doesn't connect to a separate power source in the computer and isn't designed for use with bus-powered devices. Admittedly, the power requirements of a flash drive should be minimal but I can't dismiss lack of juice as a contributing factor. Further tests with the drive connected to the Inateck card are a must. For now, I will not use the SanDisk drive with it.
However, and most importantly, the drive functioned perfectly when connected to the built-in USB port of the tower, albeit slowly since it's USB 2.0 and it performed perfectly when connected to the built-in port of my Macbook Pro and performed perfectly when connected to the MPow powered USB 3.0 hub. And, speaking of using the Sandisk Extreme with my Macbook Pro, the results of the tests reflected even faster copies!
Here are the results using the same data used on the Mac Pro:
Copying the data from the Sandisk Extreme to the internal SSD of my Macbook Pro took 41 seconds.
Copying the data from Macbook Pro's internal SSD to the SanDisk Extreme took 1 minute 7 seconds.
My Macbook Pro has only two USB 3.0 ports. I needed more USB ports and shortly after buying the Inateck card for the Mac Pro, I purchased an Mpow 7 Port Premium Aluminum Powered USB 3.0 hub. The Mac Pro is now at my office but I kept the Mpow USB 3.0 hub. I keep it connected to one of the USB 3.0 ports on my Macbook Pro and it is the primary means by which I connect USB devices to the computer. So, it was important to see how the Sandisk Extreme performed when connected to the Mpow USB 3.0 hub.
Copying the same data I used for the tests on the Mac Pro from the Sandisk which was plugged into the Mpow USB hub which was connected to the Macbook Pro took 44 seconds.
Copying the data from the Macbook Pro back to the SanDisk Extreme connected to the USB 3.0 hub took 1 minute 10 seconds.
Wicked fast for a flash drive!
I'm not sure why the time of the copy increased when the drive was connected to the MPow USB 3.0 hub but I'm not concerned. The difference is insignificant in my opinion. The SanDisk Extreme is so fast that you're not going to care. It's a flash drive after all, not a boot drive or data drive whose performance is critical for day to day work. For the record, the Mpow USB 3.0 hub has performed admirably since the day I bought it and it's definitely a highly recommended solid piece of hardware. If you need a USB 3.0 hub, definitely consider spending the extra bucks for it or its Anker twin.
One of the reasons I chose the 64GB model of the SanDisk Extreme was because I planned to turn it into an emergency boot drive for several of Macs. The extra capacity will allow me to partition it so each machine can have its own boot drive. My previous attempt to do this with a Patriot Axle 32GB USB 2.0 flash drive for two machines proved unsuccessful. I was able to make the boot disks but performance was dreadful. Spinning beachballs and delays made booting a Mac off the drive unworkable. I was hoping this wouldn't be the case with the SanDisk Extreme flash drive. And, it worked! In fact, booting from and working off the SanDisk Extreme felt like I was booting off an SSD connected via USB 3.0. To say I was pleased is an understatement!
I only recently purchased the Early 2013 Macbook Pro. I also own a 2009 Macbook Pro with a 2.26 GHz Core 2 Duo, 8 gigs of RAM and an SSD. I bought it new in '09 as a secondary machine to use on the road and when bcking up and/or repairing my Mac Pro (which I still owned at the time) or my office's iMac (which has since been replaced with the Mac Pro). It's a slow machine by current standards and only has Firewire and USB 2.0 for external drive connections. Since using the SanDisk Extreme as a boot drive for my Early 2013 Macbook Pro under USB 3.0 was such a success, I decided to see what would happen if I tried to boot the '09 Macbook Pro with it. Sometimes you have to do something just for giggles. I wasn't holding my breath since it's the oldest, slowest machine I own and only has USB 2.0.
It was successful! In fact, booting off the '09 Macbook Pro off the SanDisk Extreme was faster than booting it off an external USB 2.0 hard disk drive. No beachballs. No slowdowns. The machine still felt snappy! I actually typed a portion of this review on the old machine while it was running off the SanDisk Extreme. This was totally unexpected and made for a wonderful surprise.
This is not to say that anyone should use a USB flash drive as a regular boot drive. They're not designed for this purpose, so my guess is that it's probably not a good idea. However, as an emergency boot drive with a basic installation of the OS and a couple of drive utilities and/or even a backup copy of some critical data, I'm willing to give it a shot even if it is not the intended use for a flash drive. An emergency is an emergency and if the stick as a boot drive can get the job done, even as a last resort, then why not?
Final assessment:
Buy this USB flash drive! Buy several of them! The SanDisk Extreme 64GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive is incredibly fast! I don't have the software to measure the actual speeds but copying gigs of files to and from it takes a few seconds to a few minutes, depending on the quantity of data and machine involved. One key difference between this model and other USB flash drives is that it's fast enough for me to use as a boot drive for my Macs. That was one of my goals and its performance exceeded my expectations. My only concerns are the drive feels lightweight and has a slider mechanism and appears to have problems with an Inateck USB 3.0 card in my office's Mac Pro. That means the drive will require a touch of TLC when using it and further tests with the Inateck card are necessary. However, the sheer performance of the drive vastly outweighs these issues. I plan to buy a slew of these drives to give as gifts to friends and family, even if their machines only have USB 2.0. They'll still benefit from the performance of this particular drive. It's much faster than other USB 3.0 flash drives and it'll blow away any flash drive that has just USB 2.0. A very worthwhile purchase!
-------------UPDATE-------------
October 15, 2014
I confirmed there is a compatibility issue between the Inateck USB 3.0 card I have installed in my office's Mac Pro (formerly my personal machine) and SanDisk Extreme 64GB USB 3.0 thumb drives. I have two of the SanDisk sticks now. Identical models. Both formatted as MacOS Extended (Journaled). Both unmounted during copies when the drive was connected directly to the Inateck USB 3.0 card. No problems at all when the drives are connected to one of the Mac Pro's stock USB 2.0 ports.
To take it a step further, I took a MPow Aluminum Premium USB 3.0 Hub which I use at home with my 2013 Macbook Pro and brought it to my office. I connected the MPow hub to the Inateck card and plugged the SanDisk drives into it. No problems at all when the SanDisk Extreme sticks are connected to the MPow hub rather than directly to the Inateck card itself.
The sticks have no problems at all when connected directly to my '13 Macbook Pro, several '12 Macbook Airs, a recent iMac, a mid '09 Macbook Pro and a late '08 Macbook and a '08 Mac Mini. And, no problems when connected to the MPow while the hub was connected my 2013 Macbook Pro.
So, under the circumstances, I think it's reasonable to say there is an issue between the SanDisk Extreme USB 3.0 sticks and the Inateck USB 3.0 card. What the actual problem is I can't say with certainty but my instincts say it's a power issue. The Inateck card doesn't have a direct connect to the power supply of the Mac Pro. Rather, it gets juice directly from the PCI-E connection.
The SanDisk USB stick is the only bus-powered device I've used with the card. Every other device I've used with a direct connection to the card had its own source of power, i.e. several hard disk drives. No problems at all with any of the devices that have their own power source. So, I think the Inatack card just doesn't have the juice to handle one or more bus-powered devices, even something with low-power requirements like a USB stick.
Robert
| Read Speed | 190 Megabytes Per Second |
|---|---|
| Connectivity Technology | USB |
| Color | Black |
| Flash Memory Type | USB |
| RAM | 64 GB |
