warrenth wrote:You were lucky to have a hard drive. I used to save my computer programs to audio cassette tapes.

Oh yeah, Commodore Basic! Everything I wrote in high school was stored that way

Can anyone "fathom" why this thumbdrive only waterproof to 1.8 m or 6 ft

From a review on Amazon:

"Slowest write speed imaginable"

Centon claims a write speed of up to 3 MB/s ... which is abysmal. This is one of the slowest drives that I have ever seen.

Doesn't anyone (who bought/is thinking of buying) this drive realize that they are buying flash memory that they may NEVER ever be able to use? What good is 64 GB when it will take (many) hours to access it?


I thought I was cheap but anyone who buys this is just plain foolish.

I bought one on woot! last time they had one (@ $50) and love it! Not the fastest but that doesn't matter to me. I read/write several GB every day with it and no problems at all. Has even gone through the wash and dryer once without a hitch in operation.

Anyone know if it can be password protected

stopher2475 wrote:So if a 64 gb flash drive 30 bucks can someone explain how a 128 gb SSD typically goes for over 125? I don't expect it to be exactly linear but come on.

It's like anything. You can buy a bottle of sparkling wine for $2.99 at CVS or you can pay $500 for champagne bottle service with an exotic dancer.

This will explain it.
http://premnair.wordpress.com/2010/12/20/ssd-solid-state-drive-vs-flash-drive-usb-drive/

bobcline wrote:LOL harddavid, the IBM System/360 -- don't forget Basic Assembly Language (BAL).

The 360, wasn't that the new fangled machine that replaced the EAM equipment, 403/407 (Electronic Accounting Machine), 023 sorter 514 interpreter and punched card merger/collator back in the sixties?

Oh no, that was the 1401, programming language: Autocoder :-)

Geeze, you old guys.

Hard to forget z/OS Assembler since that is what I use every day!

Dud wrote:From a review on Amazon:

"Slowest write speed imaginable"

Centon claims a write speed of up to 3 MB/s ... which is abysmal. This is one of the slowest drives that I have ever seen.

Doesn't anyone (who bought/is thinking of buying) this drive realize that they are buying flash memory that they may NEVER ever be able to use? What good is 64 GB when it will take (many) hours to access it?
I thought I was cheap but anyone who buys this is just plain foolish.

Yes you are very cheap and you say that about everythng. Foolish indeed !

usalimey wrote:Anyone know if it can be password protected

Should be able to use TrueCrypt and encrypt the volume.
http://www.truecrypt.org

This was the worst. 3Mb/s was slow enough. Because I had a large number of files, it took over most of the weekend to backup about 50GB of data.

Every time I went to copy changed files, it took 4-5x longer than my 32GB flash drive.

After about 2 months it crashed. I was not about to exchange a drive that has my data on it (who knows if it could be extracted).

This was probably my worst Woot purchase. I would never touch Centon with a 10 foot pole. Back then it was about $60.

Burning-Chrome wrote:Yes, it's true. I have... Used..... punch cards. There, I said it...

Only a real man can joggle a deck of punch cards!

The transfer rate does seem very slow, but I think the size of the drive trumps that. Just transfer overnight while you're asleep!

Truelyscrumptious wrote:Oh yeah, Commodore Basic! Everything I wrote in high school was stored that way

You were lucky to have a Commodore, the ancient Egyptians only had a pencil and papyrus ...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ih1ZWE3pe9o

I like this deal for $19 (free ship):


Transcend JetFlash 530 32GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive (Purple) Model TS32GJF530

Read 32 MByte/s, Write 10 MByte/s

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820208552&Tpk=20-208-552

So basically if you buy 2 of these, it's $38 vs $35, same storage as today's deal, much better performance, you get this in the form of 2 drives vs 1 (which may be a pro or con depending on your preference).

Water resistant to the bottom of the washing machine would be a usefull feature. Although the other non water resistant drives I have washed have come out OK somehow.

Beware - I've actually owned two of the 4gb and one of the 8gb models of these. I gave one of the 4gb ones to my daughter. Both of them quit working within days of each other after only about a year. I used mine almost daily, but my daughter only used hers a couple of times a month. It was strange, almost like they were on a timer or something. The 8gb did the same thing. After about a year it just quit working. Maybe it's just my bad luck - I don't know.

randomiser wrote:S'alright...even the Acer Iconia won't read anything above 32 gB.

I have this and the Acer Iconia, no problems at all.

If you filled this device with music, to play in your vehicle's on board mp3/usb player you could circumnavigate the the equator 2.75 times without hearing the same song twice...!

How many 3.5" high density floppy discs can I backup onto this? THOSE WERE THE DAYS!

toddinfl wrote:Waterproof up to 1.8M.

I guess we just don't have the technology to get to 2 meters!

Oh, I thought that meant up to 1.8 megabytes. That makes more sense now.

bigmurali wrote:I remember back in 1996 buying a 250MB hard-drive for $175 and was happy I got an "awesome deal"

Hey, just 4 years earlier I bgt my first real computer. The 40 meg hd was 375. You done good.

This would be really great to back up your smartphone or PDA and have it on your keyring.

If I was in the U.S. at the moment I'd be in for three, two of them as Merry Winter Solstice gifts!

Prime Suspect wrote:Does it come with a racing stripe?

If it was USB 3.0...then yes!

Truelyscrumptious wrote:My old COBOL programs were on 8" floppys. At least I never used punch cards - LOL!


Now I have to decide if I really need 3, hmmm ...

Yeah, I used punch cards in 1981-1983 in college. Awwww the memories.

benjaminleebates wrote:If you filled this device with music, to play in your vehicle's on board mp3/usb player you could circumnavigate the the equator 2.75 times without hearing the same song twice...!

Do these come standard with USB compatability, or is it an aftermarket option?

stopher2475 wrote:So if a 64 gb flash drive 30 bucks can someone explain how a 128 gb SSD typically goes for over 125? I don't expect it to be exactly linear but come on.

Actually, I think this explains it better than all previous suggestions: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5067/understanding-tlc-nand

While there is some design and controller overhead, the biggest cost is the NAND, and USB sticks tend to use slow TLC with minimal write endurance, which is as cheap as flash gets. You don't write to a USB stick like you write to an SSD, so they can get away with it.

"Hate to admit it, but I DID use punch cards - FORTRAN and COBOL. On an IBM System/360."

I used to work on a Univac 318 that had a whopping 4k of memory and was the size of 3 refrigerators. It had a drum drive that was the size of a volkswagen. The bootstrap program that had to be entered to read the tape drive was on 5 level paper punch tape.

Could you guess that I still work in IT today?

I have an install image for setting up new laptops that comes on 3 dual layer DVD's. I can fit all three disks on this stick and cut my installation time by 50%. AND I don't have to worry about the disks getting scratched anymore.

In for ONE.

Let's see.... 3mb/sec * 60 seconds *.... I guess that maybe this will arrive in 17.4 days?

TheMrBillShow wrote:The specs seem to check out at the manufacturer...

They claim up to 3MBs as the write speed... real-world conditions can expect 2/3 of the claimed speed, or about 2MBs...

IT WILL TAKE ALMOST NINE HOURS (9) TO WRITE 64GB TO THIS DRIVE...

Any flash drive this large is USELESS, if it is also this SLOW...

I'm test benchmarking some new flash drives right now... and most are almost 10 time faster than this drive...

I was with you until the generality: "Any flash drive this large is USELESS, if it is also this SLOW..."

Some people save docs, (not total backups) and will add a few each day. In my case, a single 60 second audio file. I don't know if everyone needs to back up 60+ GB all the time in the real world.

However, I am more concerned with reliability and the concern over putting all my data-eggs in one big basket.

Don't know whether the file system is NTFS or FAT32. My other USB cards in FAT32 cann't handle any file size bigger than 3GB. If this one is still in FAT32 (I believe so) then there is really no advantage for capacity greater than 16GB.

[quote postid="5000141" user="Truelyscrumptious"]My old COBOL programs were on 8" floppys. At least I never used punch cards - LOL!

Hey, I still have some of my punch cards. They bring back great memories ... and make great book marks.

The majority of the Centon 32gb Flash Card buyers on Amazon.com wished they had never bought it:

http://www.amazon.com/Centon-Class-Flash-Memory-32GBSDHC10/product-reviews/B004L08DCM/ref=cm_cr_pr_hist_1?ie=UTF8&filterBy=addOneStar&showViewpoints=0

Truelyscrumptious wrote:Oh yeah, Commodore Basic! Everything I wrote in high school was stored that way

Had a Commodore 64...even had a Vic 20 before that. Seems like there was a 16 baud modem on that thing.

jaburg wrote:Waterproof to 1.8M means toilet or bathtub. That is about it. Do not even take it poolside.

Dang... you got a deep bathtub!

i can "fathom" that it's water resistant to 1.8 meters. ;)

harddavid wrote:Hate to admit it, but I DID use punch cards - FORTRAN and COBOL. On an IBM System/360.

JCL on punch cards RULE!

I bought one, and love it. I hate having the issue of worrying there isnt enough space, dont have that problem anymore. Only issue is that mine didnt come with that super sweet carbine with key ring

Reviews from the "Parent company" website:
http://www.amazon.com/Centon-DataStick-Waterproof-Flash-DSW64GB-001/product-reviews/B002Q8HOBM/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

gusvonpooch wrote:@martmann4 "I've had around 30 different flash drives over the years (1st one was 56MB I think) only one had an attached cap, I've never lost a cap, so I don't understand why people have a problem with cap loss"
You are way too organized,I on the other hand have multi caps in my desk but no idea where the darn flash drives are !

This is where everyone else's lost caps go...!

3MB/s read and write speed.
Lemmings are faster than that!