USB memory sticks exist more than 10 years on the market and are a commodity, which is not very expensive. Because of the improvements of flash memory you get models with multiple GB of memory for 10 EUR or less. On the other hand, this is also a problem: A while a ago, there where reports of faked products, which advertised a higher capacity than they really have, which causes loss of data. The usage as a boot media, e.g. to install an operating system from the USB stick or doing system repairs, is also sometimes problematic.

Therefore, i decided to get a branded product, which is a bit “expensive” with 20 EUR (as of september 2008), but it works reliable and offers some useful details – a “Cruzer Micro” with 8 GB from SanDisk. SanDisk is known as a manufacturer of flash memory for a long time and developed a number of media types in cooperation with other companies.

The stick is formatted as an U3 memory stick, where a number of applications are already installed (Skype, a tool to synchronize data and a password management tool), but it can also used as a pure memory medium. As an alternative, you can also use PortableApps, which can be used on any USB stick.

This stick is very compact and offers a retractable USB connector – an advantage to the usual protection cap, which can be lost easy. The slider snaps in two fixed positions, so there is no risk, that the connector may slide out when carrying the stick around.

Additionally, there is a ring, which is fixed to the housing with a solid metal bolt to carry the stick on a key ring or similar – many other sticks only have a hole in the plastic housing, which often breaks after a while due to abrasion.

The following pictures are also available larger – just click them.

The Cruzer Micro closed

The Cruzer Micro with extended USB plug

Under the slider there is a LED, which is used as an indicator for read- and write-operations. In idle state, the LED slowly gets light and dark, when accessing the stick, it flashes. The following video demonstrates this – first accessing the stick, then “idle state”:

A test with HD-Tune shows, that the speed is acceptable – the average is 20 MB over the whole capacity:

Additionally i copied a file with 1.17 GB (1198 MB) to the stick, which took 186 seconds – this results in an average write speed of 6.4 MB per second.

After preparing the stick with the appropriate tools, it was bootable in my PC as well as in a Netbook without any problem.

Meanwhile this model is also available with 16 GB and slightly faster (25 MB/s reading, about 7 MB/s writing).

The SanDisk Micro is not the fastest USB stick on the market, but with its retractable USB plug it is very compact and can be used as a U3 stick or as a boot media. Due to the price i can definitely recommend it.