knarf009 wrote:I don't entirely grasp the purpose of a 32 Gig Flash Drive. If you need to move vast quantities of data then just buy an external hard drive.
For 30 bucks you're halfway there already. Might as well throw down another 30 and get a 500gig external and have ~15 times the storage space without sacrificing much in the way of portability.

I have an old Thinkpad X41 with a tiny HDD, but it uses the 1.8" drive, so instead of buying a ridiculously expensive out of production HDD, I can use one of these and carry around most of my music.

I don't understand the obsession with the cap. The majority of the USB cables and devices I own don't have caps. They seem to be able to withstand the dangerous confines of my pocket without failing. What's up?

Bought 3 Centon 4gb sticks 3 or so years ago from Woot. I kept one, gave one to my daughter and my wife gave one to a coworker. Strangest thing - All three worked great for about a year and a half. Then they all died within a week of each other. It was almost like they had a self destruct timer. Weird.

What's all the posts about "The cap is a problem"??? I have always thrown away caps, then they are no problem. If you work in a super dirty environment, maybe it might be a problem (my environment is a bit dirty) but I've never had a problem with using USB sticks with no cap. I'm sure someone has mudded up the plug on a USB stick, but it's too easy to keep them in a bag or something, then no cap is needed. I guess some folks just gotta gripe about something...

I ran benchmark tests on the 16 GB when I got it through Woot a while back. The device was averaging 10-12 Mbps read and started at 10 Mbps write but kept creeping down as the benchmark went on. At the end of the benchmark write speed was only about 6 Mbps. I have run a few files over 1.5 GB and I can defiantly agree with the benchmark. If it is a small file, things go at an alright pace but larger files just take forever!

If you do not mind with R/W speed and just need a lot of storage, this is your guy but... if you want to pull something off your computer fast, pass on this.

Altazi wrote:The read and write speeds of this devices are pretty bad - 5 MB/s and 3 MB/s respectively. - and this from the manufacturer's website.

I'm not sure where you are looking, but the Centon Website lists the device as 5 MB/s Write & 10MB/s Read... Centon DSP32GB-001 Specs

Bought 2 of these during a previous Woot Off (at a few bucks more at that). Lost one to a co-worker (who suddenly became an ex-coworker), other than that, no problems.

My remaining one is currently being used as a Ghost boot disk for deploying images to laptops. Systems boot off of it very quickly. In for 3 more!

bought one of these in a woot-off some time ago. It's definitely well constructed and fancy/expensive looking. Extremely easy to lose, in fact I lost it a few days after putting it into use. Thankfully I found it (although it was 6 months later).

I wish it had come with one of those lanyard thingy's to make it a bit easier to find since now I'm afraid to use it to store anything of importance.

Still, highly recommended for the price. If I had the money I'd pick up 3 more so I could continue to have one on hand after (inevitably) misplacing another.

efooter wrote:In for two. Wish woot had offered this a month ago, when I bought a different 32gb usb drive.

Not sure what I'm going to do with both of these, but the price is right.


Anyone know if this fits on a keychain?

it has one of those annoyingly small cell-phone charm size holes on the end.

Loose cap a deal breaker? Give me a break. I guess those worried about a lost cap would never buy a set of screw drivers without some GPS tracking device built in each driver so they never get "lost". I've had a USB drive that hangs on my back pack with no cap for the past 2 years. No problems. Sounds like an excuse just to hear yourself type.

upchucked wrote:Why buy a single USB drive. Buy an SD card reader for $1 and add in whatever size SD card you like. Fill one up, replace the card and you are good to go. I use them to save photos when traveling.

Cheap here: http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=sd+card+reader&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=5400398742473495065&sa=X&ei=Mjo5TtjRCKnq0gHmg7n-Aw&ved=0CGoQ8wIwBA

The reader is cheap enough, where do you get a 32GB micro SDHC card for this price?

Sorry Woot, but this is faster, no cap to lose and only $3 more. Think it's NTFS formatted too.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820313090

Bought this the last time it was on WOOT - love it; no data loss issues, no troubles whatsoever. haven't lost the cap either.

Altazi wrote:Run, do not walk, away from this unit. The read and write speeds of this devices are pretty bad - 5 MB/s and 3 MB/s respectively. - and this from the manufacturer's website. These specs are definitely on the low end of USB flash drive performance.

Thanks for the heads up!!! I was too lazy to look up the info.

My God, I barely use the flash drives I already have, but I just can't resist this one!

Remember when the 32 meg thumbdrives were more expensive than this?

...must be a bargain.

I thwarted my "losing the cap" problem-
took a needle, poked holes in the cap,
tied dental floss thru it and then fastened the other end of the floss to the hanging loop on the other end of the stick.
No more lost caps!

It is interesting that the same product was on sale last on 3/8 and now again on 8/3.
Coincidence?

craigthom wrote:Well, if you want an example: playing music in the car. I'm not entirely comfortable with having a hard drive hanging out of my dash, bouncing around as I drive, and carrying it in and out of the car all the time would be a pain in the ass.

Unless you are trying to smuggle it through Customs, I would suggest carrying it in your pocket...then it wouldn't be a pain in the ***

CrazyLemming wrote:While a 2.5" hard drive may seem small
(that's what she said)
it can be awkward walking with it flopping around in your pants all day.

Welcome to the club of uncomfortably hung gentlemen.

I accidentally deleted today's Woot Digest before reading the Mortimer and Monte conversation. Can someone post it? They're hilarious. :-D

Thanks,
Ariel

I've purchased multiple Centon USB flash drives in the past, and have had decent success with them.

As others have mentioned, they're not the absolute fastest out there - but for a simple backup or data transfer they're a great utilitarian flash drive.

bpr2 wrote:woah, please let there be a tracking device for this thing. Imagine losing 32 gigs worth of data somewhere!

CHECK THE REVIEWS! Sounds like you're going to lose the 8-16gb worth of data you'll be lucky to get on in the first place. Shame, I was going to be in for two, til reading virtually everyone said it's defective. Bummer.

Got it for a steal last time they had this...great buy even for this price! It holds A LOT!

Altazi wrote:Run, do not walk, away from this unit. The read and write speeds of this devices are pretty bad - 5 MB/s and 3 MB/s respectively. - and this from the manufacturer's website. These specs are definitely on the low end of USB flash drive performance.

LOL that is truly pathetic read / writes. And I don’t think it’s the encryption as other secure USB drives don’t have THAT bad speeds.

As to the USB 3.0 comment … agreed. But who (that is not a geek) actually has a 3.0 port in their computer much less see 3.0 ports anywhere? Shoot, I’m a geek and I haven’t found the need to upgrade to 3.0 in my home build.

knarf009 wrote:I don't entirely grasp the purpose of a 32 Gig Flash Drive. If you need to move vast quantities of data then just buy an external hard drive.

More than half of the added cost of a flash drive is due to its size. Even though some of the portable hard drives are getting small enough to pocket, the flash drive still fits a lot better. I have a small lowepro camera pouch on my belt, for my iphone, headphones, spare SD card, flash drive, and a few other nicknacks. If I need to luck a LOT of data I just grab my 500gb lacie rugged, but that's not fitting comfortably into any pocket.

Seeing LOTS of negative reviews on this, many of them with the drive dying shortly after purchase, or failing at a point in the write, or arriving DOA. Before I read the reviews I was considering getting one, but it doesn't look like the risk justifies saving a few bucks.

For those complaining about losing the cap, get a Lexar Firefly 16gb. The lanyard attaches to the CAP and the drive snaps securely to it. So you can tether to the cap instead of the drive, and don't need to untether to use the drive. The cap is rigid acrylic and so makes a ton of noise if left flopping around without the drive, making it difficult for a forgetful person like me to leave it behind in a USB port. (BRILLIANT design idea) I guess I'll be sticking with this until Lexar comes up with a 32.

Back in the early to mid 90's, I helped my former employer design a LAN for the mid-sized office. For the entire company, we spec'ed out the mass storage device -- for 50 employees -- to be a 5 gigabyte raid array. If I recall, the price tag was somewhere around $40,000.

kcmark wrote:Looks like an ok deal but I refuse to ever buy another USB drive that has a cap which can be lost. After having a USB drive with a swivel cover, I'll never go back to a design with a stinking cap....never.

Someone could make a fortune selling replacement caps at, say, $1.00 each, six for $5.00.

I bought this drive to keep a backup of my music (downloaded in mp3 format). I do not care much about the speed, but I am looking for reliablity. Reviews I have found say it was either a great little drive or a piece of junk. More on the reliable than the negative so I bought one.

KyserSoze wrote:Really? I'm NTFS.

I'm ZFS. (I wish!)

Helopoh wrote:Actually want to get this to take on vacation with me so we don't have to bring our Laptop. Someone will have one with them and I simply would like to use this to take my photos and video off my camera daily and have clean memory cards. Would this be something for that or would just increasing the size of another microSD?

Honestly a week at Disney with 13 people will equal a large amount of pictures.. :D

Unless your camera has a low resolution, or you're only going to be there for a few days, I'm not sure if 32 gigs would cut it. I could fill this up in 2-3 days, easily. Of course, I have a pro-dslr and I take at least 200 shots a day, minimum. I had to bring a 500gb usb drive to Arizona when we were there for a week and a half!

I just can't wait until Thunderbolt Flashdrives hit the market!

Narg wrote:What's all the posts about "The cap is a problem"??? I have always thrown away caps, then they are no problem. If you work in a super dirty environment, maybe it might be a problem (my environment is a bit dirty) but I've never had a problem with using USB sticks with no cap. I'm sure someone has mudded up the plug on a USB stick, but it's too easy to keep them in a bag or something, then no cap is needed. I guess some folks just gotta gripe about something...

And apparently your 'something' is griping about people griping about caps. Classic.

Bought my last flash drive from woot years ago. $25.00 for 8gb. Now same price for 32gb. Hope this new one also last 4+ years.

I often use USB flash drives when using other people's PCs. I put the removable cap on the PC keyboard to remind me not to forget the flash drive when I'm done.

People who are less scatterbrained than I am don't need a little plastic flag to remind them.

But if you have ever left your USB flash drive in somebody else's PC you know what I'm sayin'.

RWoodward wrote:Someone could make a fortune selling replacement caps at, say, $1.00 each, six for $5.00.

Or even more money selling USB drives designed without the need for a cap! Kingston's Datatraveler is a perfect example -- it also doesn't have horrible reviews on Amazon like this Centon stick.

USB drives should have a ridiculously low failure rate - there is very little to ever fail if it is manufactured correctly with decent components. The fact that this manufacturer and this drive have had such high failure rates is reason enough to avoid this Woot, unless the user could care less if any or all of his/her content on this drive is destroyed or corrupted at any given time. If one is ok with the prospect of that happening, then go for it. If not, then it would be foolish to give this a go.

DO NOT PUT A STRAP ON THE END OF THIS THING! I did and it caught on something as I stood up and it jerked the drive which broke a solder and fried it.

myndmelt wrote:The best solution I have for a flash drive with write protection is an SD Card! They are way cheaper than the Flash Drive counter parts and the best thing is that you can find Flash drive style readers. Buying both of them together is still cheaper than most of those ones with the hardware lock on the flashdrive and... you can change the storage! Win/win/win. I know that link you posted says that SDCards are bad, but I have a patriot 32gb one and its been working great. I clean virus's off of machines everyday and still see no signs of it ever being infected.

SD cards use a software write-protection scheme, as the site stated. it's entirely possible for malware to bypass it, and frankly, for forensic investigations, I would not use a flash drive as my primary boot media at all.

Personally though, if I'm using recovery tools for forensic analysis, I'm booting it from a CD-R and using a flash drive as a writable area for any recovered files or copies of evidence.

I see people thinking of moving large files on this device, like HD movies, etc. Has anyone mentioned the limitations of FAT32?

If you want to move files among different operating systems (Mac, Windows, Linux, etc) you'll most likely be using FAT32, but in so doing, you'll lose the ability to store files larger than 4GB.

SockV wrote:Remember when the 32 meg thumbdrives were more expensive than this?

...must be a bargain.

I remember paying over a thousand dollars for an 800 meg hard drive back in the early 90's - drive memory was almost $1.50 a meg.
This drive is about $1.28 a GB or less than a penny a MB