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HP USB Flash Drive V135w 4 GB
by tinkerbell18
As a student and a trainee teacher I have found that one of my most valuable possessions is a USB pen. In my third year this became vital as I had a dissertation to write, and wanted to make sure I had it backed up in several places. Cue me popping into work at Currys and selecting two 4GB USB pens. And cue this review, almost 2 years ... after buying these life-saving devices!
I am a bit of a novice when it comes to USB pens, so I will be very honest with my choice of USB; I got it because it was the best value when you compared price and memory size, and there was a string and clip attached to the end of the USB so it could be attached to something, such as your phone, house keys etc. As I am prone to loosing things I thought that this would be an advantage, and made sure that any USB I compared had something to attach it to my keys - otherwise it got put right back on the shelf.
I can't remember how much exactly I spent on the USB pen, but I'm pretty sure it was £8. Considering that USB pens can go up to the £30 mark, I considered that £8 for a 4GB memory stick was reasonable - so reasonable that I bought two and still paid less money than I would have if I had bought one 8GB memory stick. Looking around nowadays for USB pens, I probably would have been able to get the same amount of memory for a lot less, but I was in need, and I had money in my pocket and it looked like I had a bargain, so off to the till I went.
The USB itself is absolutely dinky. It's a HP product, is a blue and white colour and is about 3cm long, 1 cm wide and half a millimetre thick, if that! The USB part slides out of the case, making it about 4cm long but still very small! It does look as though the USB won't fit into a computer as it looks far smaller than the ports; the only difference between this and a lot of other USB pens is that there are no sides to the part that slots into the computer - and this makes it look so much smaller! This is what allows for the compact size of the USB, otherwise it would be much thicker. The cord attaches to the end of the USB through a little hole either with a clasp (like on a necklace) or by threading the cord through the hole. I used the clasp so that the cord could fit through the hole in my phone, but either way would allow the USB to be attached to pencil case zips, phones, keys etc. The cord seems quite durable, as it has been attached to my phone for a couple of months and my keys for over a year and I have yet to lose the USB!
The memory size is plenty for what I use the USB for; one has over 600 photos on it and is roughly half full, whilst the other has schemes of work, dissertation, journals and essays on it and it isn't even half full yet. I do keep an eye on the documents I keep on it, but I have never filled it, and I don't really need to delete anything to make room on it. It runs smoothly with both the computers I have used it with - a Windows Vista computer and a Windows 7 computer, without slowing either the computer or itself down. When I chose to remove it from the computer I don't have any problems and it allows itself to be removed safely straight away - whilst my hard drive continuously tells me I'm using it and it can't be safely removed just yet. And removing a memory device safely is important, as it means there is less chance of getting a virus or damaging the work saved on it.
My only sadness (and annoyance) is that the USB pen that has work rather than pictures on it decided to get corrupted a few weeks ago. This resulted in a lot of my work being wiped from it - and a lot of turning the air blue! Luckily the lessons I was teaching that day were backed up to my computer otherwise I would have cried. I'm not too sure why it broke, as I had been very careful with it. I assume that as I was using it every day, and transferring it between my computer and my school computer it just got over-used and frazzled and threw a strop. Although it seems to work fine now, and I've had no problems since, I haven't used it and have instead purchased a new one. When a USB pen corrupts itself and wipes itself like mine did, there is apparently a very good chance that it may do so again - and considering it is vital to hold my resources on it, I cannot risk any more problems. On the other hand, the exact same USB pen that holds pictures rather than work is still working beautifully - I can only assume that this is because I do not use this anywhere near as much, and don't use it between several computers.
So overall these USB pens were a bargain. They are dinky, good looking, easy to store and look good poking out of the computer, without taking up too much space. 4GB appears to be a lot of memory and hard to fill without effort. The cost wasn't too bad, but I would advise shopping around in more than just Currys to ensure you get the best deal possible. The only downside is that, although the USB pen I used mainly lasted 18 months, when it failed it failed rather incredibly and my faith in it was perhaps jolted irrevocably. I am now very careful with my remaining little USB pen, and have backed up the pictures in several places - just in case.
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Sandisk Cruzer Blade Titanium 4 GB
by 85fiona
I have had a good few flash drives over the years but this has to be the smallest one I have ever had, its teeny! Measuring around 2inches in length, half an inch wide and a few mm thick it really is rather small, but don't let its small size fool you it is a good little piece of kit!
If you don't know what a flash drive is, ... it is basically a memory stick that you plug into your computer via a USB port and you can take files from your computer and copy them onto the flash drive. This is very useful if you wish to transfer files between computers or if there is a very important document you wish to have a backup copy of you can put it on here. With a 4gb capacity it does not have the biggest amount of space in the world so you obviously couldn't back up an entire computers worth of data on to here but for the odd document or file here and there it is perfectly adequate.
As requested I have checked the read and write speeds. Depending how fast your computer is you can get up to 15mb/second read speed and up to 9mb/second write speed.
The sandisk flash drive couldn't be easier to use (as with most flash drives) you just need to plug it into your computer, the computer does some jiggery pokery and tada the fash drive is installed, it is then ready for you to copy your files across. The flash drive can be used on most windows, mac and linux operating systems and uses USB 2.0 not quite as fast as the latest USB 3.0 but fast enough, especially for such a small capacity flash drive. I'm sure I got this drive free from argos when I bough an external hard drive but a quick look online and you can get the drive for around £5, it is also available in a variety of capacities of up to 32gb which is only £17, bargin!
Overall this drive is a great deal, my only criticisms are that, yes ok I know it is cheap but it feels very cheap, it is almost entirely plastic as opposed to most other drives I have had which have more metal to them. The second slight niggle is the fact that it has no cover to put over the usb bit of the drive. Neither of these would stop my buying or recommending the drive as long as you know that you get what you pay for ;)
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Sandisk Cruzer Blade Titanium 4 GB
by SciFighterAlpha
I have had many USB memory sticks over the years and have normally stumped up for an expensive product as I can at times be abit of a technology snob. It was my girlfriend who found this available on E-Bay for under £5 and that included delivery.
Size
The San Disk memory stick really is tiny, making it perfect for ... anyone as once you have finished using it you are able to slip it into any pocket where you know it's safe. The drawback to this is that on the odd occassion you will find yourself looking for it, this can take a while due to it's small size. If you are looking for a truly portable memory stick then this may be for you.
Memory
The memory is a reasonable size, allowing a maximum of 4 gig of extra space to help keep important files and documents with you. The memory of 4gig does place restrictions on what you are able to put on the device, if you are looking for a portable way of transferring video (such as HD film or just normal film) I would suggest looking for a memory stick with a far larger memory.
Speed
As soon as this is plugged into your computer you have access to the files located on the USB and can transfer information between the PC and the USB. Transferring is done easily using the simple "drag and drop" technique to place files onto the memory stick. Alternatively you are able to save files/documents/pictures etc directly to the USB stick.
Availability
There will be no difficulty locating a good place to purchase this product. Mine was purchased new E-Bay but there are a host of other sites available. The best thing is to search around to ensure the best price, this would normally be the auction site but Amazon and other are worth checking to ensure the best price.
Overall
This is a very good sized memory stick for a very good price. My main concern is the lack of a cap or some kind of protection for the USB connection, I have had many in the past and all have had a cap to protect the vital connection parts but it seems to have been forgotten on this one. I would still recommend this though, as for the price and quality it can still only be considered a bargain.
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