SanDisk Glider 128GB USB Flash Drive

principlecounts

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/1229983.htm

Any reason why this USB stick is heavily discounted by Argos?

principlecounts

infact it's discounted everywhere !

A.Penny.Saved

It's fairly slow and only usb 2.0. You can get much faster flash drives than that.
This one is one I am about to purchase which is the same price but much much faster.
Or this one is cheaper and not quite as fast but still a lot faster than that one but won't make a big difference if you don't have usb 3.0. That Sandisk flash drive is more expensive at this store.

Dreamnine

It's not a very good deal:

* Please note item 1229983 has previously been on sale at 33.33.

nomoneytoday

mymemory do a USB3.0 stick with 128gig for under £25 delivered

A.Penny.Saved

nomoneytoday wrote: »

mymemory do a USB3.0 stick with 128gig for under £25 delivered

Yes but there are no declared speeds which makes it a big gamble in my book.

People making any references to it's speed and them declaring that it is fast with nothing to back up what they say, does not make it so without seeing any speed tests. Solely being a usb 3.0 flash drive means nothing unless the flash memory is fast enough to take any advantage of it. It could provide lower than usb 2.0 speeds which would mean being usb.3.0 is pretty worthless IMO.

USB3.0 is often a marking gimmick using slow flash memory.

Personally, fast read speeds are not much use unless there are fast write speeds because I do not want to wait for ages when copying anything to a flash drive. Decent write speeds are a must have in the majority of my flash drives/cards.

mymemory's rep is not all that good either.

A._Badger

A.Penny.Saved wrote: »

Yes but there are no declared speeds which makes it a big gamble in my book.

<Snipped>

Personally, fast read speeds are not much use unless there are fast write speeds because I do not want to wait for ages when copying anything to a flash drive. Decent write speeds are a must have in the majority of my flash drives/cards.

mymemory's rep is not all that good either.

I've had no trouble with MyMemory as a supplier but I've never bought their own brand products.

I completely agree about write speeds, though, and this is a real trap for the unwary!

Even though USB 3.0 isn't always as fast as people expect (lots of small files will make even a fast card crawl) USB 2.0 can be insufferable at times and the difference between various USB 3.0 read times can be enormous. Some USB 3.0 cards seem no faster than good USB 2.0 ones.

MyMemory (to its credit) usually tells you what the read/write speeds are for the products it sells and it's noticeable that the difference in price between the fast and slow cards and USB drives can be considerable, depending on the speeds they offer. Usually, if they are cheap it's for a reason!

enkoda

I can practically guarantee that the write speeds on these flash drives are awful, just like my 32GB Cruzer Blade.

Copying large files on to it, e.g. a 4GB video file, takes so long that it is quicker to burn it on to a blank DVD.

As has been mentioned above, avoid any drive that does not have write speeds listed.

geordie_joe

A.Penny.Saved wrote: »

This one is one I am about to purchase which is the same price but much much faster.

If you look at the description it has the words "up to" before the speeds.

Rapid Transfers: Up to 160 MB/s Read and 130 MB/s Write
- Write Speed Up To 130MB/s
- Read Speed Up To 160MB/s

All "Write Speed Up To 130MB/s" means is it will do somewhere in between 0MB/s and 130MB/s.

I really thought people stopped falling for "up to" speeds years ago. After taking out broadband that claimed speeds up to XX and then finding they can't get anything near the "up to" speed.

Also the stick appears to be one of those generic ones from china that you pay a few pennies extra to have your own details printed on. Ebay used to be full of them, because sellers thought having their web site details printed on them would increase the price (I bought 2 x 4GB). But buyers soon discovered they were no better than generic sticks (because they were generic sticks) and most sellers stopped paying the extra for the printing.

Big_Graeme

I'm intrigued, people really buy no name flash drives over a top brand just because one is USB 2 and the other USB3?

principlecounts

Big_Graeme wrote: »

I'm intrigued, people really buy no name flash drives over a top brand just because one is USB 2 and the other USB3?

Oh well, I've bought it now, my reasons for purchasing were in order of preference:

- large space: 128GB a large size for my use for personal documents.
- read/write speeds: Sandisk USB 2.0 I know what I'm getting. Lots of cheaper USB 3.0 ones, but then read the small print, I don't gamble on these things.
- cost: Just want to store files, so USB 3.0 would have been nice, but not required.
- security: was after a solution, but with one built in, not bad to start out with.

If I go for USB 3.0 in the future I would want to see benchmarks.