Sandisk flash drives; protecting our data one USB port at a time.

November 2, 11:46 PMInternet and Technology ExaminerAndrew Weiner

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Sandisk was founded in 1988. It is now one of the largest suppliers of flash memory data storage products, with products ranging from cards to go in your cameras, phones, mp2 players, to flashdrives from 2gigs to 64 gigs and beyond.

We were just able to review two of their featured products which were both plug and play on WIndows and were also recognized and usable on Ubuntu 9.04 linux distro. The testing, was on a desktop with Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 and a laptop running XP SP2;

1. Sandisk Ultrabackup USB Flashdrive (32 gigs)
2. Sandisk Extreme Contour USB Flashdrive (8 gigs)

The Sandisk Ultrabackup USB Flashdrive is a pioneer, in the sense that it is the first USB flash drive with a backup button. After the simple setup, it is a two step process; plug it in and press the button. Yes, it is just that simple. The setup was "ultra" simple. Sandisk basically walked right through it. You had to select the data you wanted backed up (it actually preselected items such as music, movies, documents, etc). It then did an "ultra" fast first time back up, and voila, it was all backed up and was now in a little space no bigger than your thumb.

You can also count on the Ultrabackup USB Flash drive to keep your data from unanted prying, as it offers the ability to protect your data with password protection and AES hardware encryption, which is the standard if you want to keep things secure.

The second of the two; the Sandisk Extreme Contour USB Fashdrive. It has the same AES encryption security as the first drive. It also has speed on its side with tested data transfer at up to 25MB/second read and 18MB/second write speeds. One additional feature that makes it quite useful to Windows Vista users is Windows Ready Boost which when utilized, will enhance the performance of the OS. It even comes with a padded case that fits nicely on a binder or key chain and appears to fit most other SanDisk drives.

Microsoft explains ready boost as;

With Windows ReadyBoost, you can use non-volatile flash memory, such as that on a universal serial bus (USB) flash drive, to improve performance without having to add additional memory "under the hood."

 These two outstanding Sandisk products and many more are available at most local retailers and Sandisk.com.