I also purchased 2 sticks and both are now useless and can not find any support to fix them

Sadly, it turned to be a bad product. I got two at the last woot-off. During the very first coping session the drive became 'write-protected'. The very same thing happened to the second one! This never happened to any of my other non-Centon drives. None of the low-level formatting tools I managed to find would format them. I contacted Centon and they sent me their util that did format both drives. Guess what? Both drives became 'write-protected' when I started coping files again. Sent both to Centon for warranty replacement. I still don't have the replacement yet to test but I'm really afraid of using these drives again. I really wish my money back instead... Highly do NOT recommend.

cake eater wrote:i had two of these crap out on me not 2 weeks after i got them from here. buyer beware.

The way the quality post preview thing was worded made me think you ate two of them...

runnerfrog13 wrote:The question is whether the sleeve is waterproof as advertised. Seems if the lid fits snugly enough, it would create a good seal.

(someone with a dead one of these should totally do an experiment... just sayin'... if it's dead already... FOR SCIENCE!)

If it's already dead, how would you really know if it's waterproof? If the tolerance is below the kind of immersion that would leave less than evident traces of moisture, you couldn't be completely sure.

It's a little amazing that anyone is purchasing these at all given the overwhelming negative reviews- ~50 cents a gigabyte isn't all that difficult to find.

http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Cruzer-Flash-Drive-SDCZ36-064G-B35/dp/B005LFT37U

there- in five seconds of searching, there's a freakin SanDisk for 60ish cents a gig- I'm sure I can do better.

Mine died within a day or two. I thought I'd get a replacement but all I got was the message "Unfortunately, we do not have any replacements for this item." from Woot. I did get my money back but I'll not be buying another Centon.

Never had a sick poop out on me, not even the very oldest funky ones I have ever owned. i am thinking it may very well not be a coincident that not even one of the ones I have owned was a centon.

Back from vacation and the first thing I see is this.

(12:04 AM, today) cake eater had two of them poop out within a couple weeks.

The way you wrote this ThunderThighs, I thought he had ingested them.

ephobia wrote:I recommend formatting these to NTFS so you can save files larger than 2 GB. I have one of these and have had no problems formatting to NTFS unlike a few other USB thumb drives I've purchased.

Wait these come formatted in Fat16 and not Fat32?

I've been looking for a bigger thumb drive myself, so seeing this got my hopes up a little bit.

Regardless, the company's name is "Centon". Is that a cross between a Centaur and a Cylon? I don't know, but when buying electronics it's always a very good idea to stick with reputable names. Just because everything is made in China these days doesn't mean the quality is the same between every company.

So in a nutshell...

1. Slow speeds (making it a bad choice for data transfers).
2. High chance of losing your data (making it a bad choice for backup).
3. "Lifetime warranty" to get another one (so it can break after a couple uses too).

Pretty easy to stamp a thumbs down on this one. I will recommend a link that someone posted earlier though:

http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Cruzer-Flash-Drive-SDCZ36-064G-B35/dp/B005LFT37U

Cruzers are amazing little drives. I've owned one for years, and multiple friends of mine have as well. You can retract the plug in for easy and safe travel and it's reliable as hell (the speeds aren't bad either).

This deal isn't the worst one ever, but you're definitely taking a risk (and not getting a very impressive product). Spending $5 more for a MUCH better card of the same data capacity is a MUCH better choice here...

...unless you're mountain biking from computer to computer.

CowboyDann wrote:Back from vacation and the first hing i see is this.



The way you wrote this ThunderThighs, I thought he had ingested them.

Hi Dann, can you step back in and do the quality posts? This week is going to be a killer, so I took up your slack. I'll even give you a head start if you want to see if you want to copy quality posts from the last woot (same price $29.99):
http://www.woot.com/forums/viewpost.aspx?postid=5000071

and I'm checking the other woots real quick. Have a good week.

whatsamattaU wrote:Hi Dann, can you step back in and do the quality posts? This week is going to be a killer, so I took up your slack. I'll even give you a head start if you want to see if you want to copy quality posts from the last woot (same price $29.99):
http://www.woot.com/forums/viewpost.aspx?postid=5000071

and I'm checking the other woots real quick. Have a good week.

Haha Thanks a lot WhatsamattaU. I'll be back in business tomorrow night, a very long day followed up by a late six hour drive has me wiped out and I'm about to pass out typing this. Looking forward to catching up on what was missed and Music Monday on Turntable.fm

It comes with a carabineer "n. A soldier armed with a carbine". That would provide a LOT of protection. I suppose they they mean one of those little clips which resemble carabiners.

The specs say it will take almost 6 hours to fill the thing up if you try to copy all 64GB in one sitting. Assuming you can sit that long. And don't think the extra capacity will let you store/play BluRay or HDDVD movies since those require at least 12 times the transfer speeds that this thing can do, in fact it seems close to the minimum required for DVD quality.

Good buy, but it is very slow.

Thanks guys. I just about hit "I want one" but not before reading the reviews. I will not be buying one of these drives now. Shame on you Woot for selling a horrible reviewed faulty product!

I too bought one the last time. I didn't get through loading it with my work files. It went "write protected" as I was transferring the first batch.

I received my replacement drive from Centon on Friday. The new one accepted all the files.....but I also have them backed up on other drives. Not sure I trust this one.

I bought one of these the last time they were offered. It died within two days. Still waiting to hear back from their support department.

ephobia wrote:I recommend formatting these to NTFS so you can save files larger than 2 GB. I have one of these and have had no problems formatting to NTFS unlike a few other USB thumb drives I've purchased.

This is also a way to significantly improve the read/write speed of these critters.

ThunderThighs wrote:Sorry for the problem. Remember this has a Lifetime warranty through Centon.

According to this page, the datastick sport only has a 5 year warranty. http://www.centon.com/company/policies/warranty


[Thunderthighs: It is a Lifetime Warranty per the product page.]

cake eater wrote:i had two of these crap out on me not 2 weeks after i got them from here. buyer beware.

Me too. There's some sort of design flaw and that's why they're giving them away, if you ask me. My has some sort of 'write protect' on it where you can't write, erase, or change the contents. Website is USELESS on fixing the problem. BEWARE!!!

I have laundered my regular USB sticks more often than I can mention. They always have worked if I led them dry out before using them.

dracodrago wrote:That's what he said.....

lol I don't want one, but as a response to the "lifetime warranty" the only thing that is helpful for is getting a new USB stick to mess up and then getting another one to mess up and continuing the pattern forever. It doesn't bring back any of the data that gets lost.

If you can actually "lose" your data on a stick, you are definitely doing something wrong. Sticks are for transfer and temporary data use. Remember to not delete the data from your computer when you put it on your stick and you should be fine, maybe inconvenienced, but no data loss.

Bought one of these last time it was on Woot. Bad decision on my part. Would not work at all in my car and very flaky in my PC and my laptop. I threw it in the trash in favor of a 64GB PNY USB 3.0 from Newegg, which has worked flawlessly. Do yourself a favor and put your money towards a better product.

I've got a couple Centon 32GB from woot quite awhile ago. Yup, writing to them is sloooooow. I had seen the warnings, but was still surprised at the slow write speed.

Reading from them to my USB 2.0 media player is just fine. When I copy to them, I just start all the copies from my pc to the sticks before I go to bed and they are done in the a.m. I am using NTFS and files that are often 3-9GB in size.

However, after seeing the reminder of USB 3.0, unless you REALLY need a flash of this size, I'd wait for 3.0 prices to come down.

Assuming you can maintain the maximum transfer rate of 3MB/s, it looks like it would take about 6 hours to fully transfer data to/from this.

Still, nice a cheap as an extra backup drive, but painfully slow.

I've had six of these (bought three here and had to return every one), and am still unable to format them for use on both Mac and PC. I can sometimes copy data to a stick, but then they show up a write protected and there's no way fix it, even using Centon's software.

These are HORRIBLE if you want anything except NTFS.

psquared57 wrote:I also purchased 2 sticks and both are now useless and can not find any support to fix them

Your only hope is to contact Centon Support. That's who I've been dealing with.

Bought one in the last Woot offering - works well, with no speed issues. However, these are very sensitive to proper USB removal. If you yank it out 'hot' you'll get the 'write protected' error that will require low-level reformatting to clear. Happily (for me) I found out from a friend who also bought one at the same time, rather than doing it myself.

rantng wrote:Mine actually crapped out on me today. Got an error message "the Disk can not be written because it is write protected". I've been trying to save about 15GB of lost data using flash recovery software. FYI, the "sport" part of the flash drive is just a rubber sleeve that fits over a standard flash drive.

You say it says "the Disk can not be written because it is write protected" but can you still access what you do have on it?

I don't know why random people are complaining about them being slow, mine's fast, check your interface. Or maybe you got a bad one. Read speed is better than 19MB/sec, write better than 9MB/sec. (and YES it will take quite awhile to fill, 64gb at 9MB/sec, blame the math and the capacity, not the speed) About two hours to write a single 62gb file, longer if there's a ton of files with directory overhead for each. 1 hr to read it back. You'd be stupid to try to move such large files with a flash drive, that's not what it's really meant for. It's greatest strength is to have a large variety of things on the go, I use mine as a portable service drive and it has plenty of room for my utility apps, install and update images, and is even bootable!

I got one and love it, it's huge, fast, and reliable. Several above have had problems with them failing - they have a lifetime warranty, did you get a replacement or cry in your beer?

I tried to get a second as a spare last time they were up and it sold out WHILE I was typing in a comment, around 10:30am. So this time I got my order of business correct. ;) And no, it does not have an unremovable second partition that mounts when you plug it in.

It's not really waterproof, but is somewhat water-resistent. The rubber bumper can easily be removed to make the drive smaller and fit into crowded USB port areas.

Very slow..........

For $5 more you can get this drive from big brother Amazon:
SanDisk Cruzer 64GB USB Flash Drive SDCZ36-064G-B35 ,Black
This drive has 4.5 star reviews as opposed to Centon drives that are lucky if they get above 2 star.

http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Cruzer-Flash-Drive-SDCZ36-064G-B35/dp/B005LFT37U

Is woot like the Archos and Centon dumping ground or something?

Well I bought two the first time based on need and price. I really wanted for loading Movies and having lots of PDF files available in an Emergency. It does this just fine. I will add, the rubber cap does stay on rather tight so thats a plus and its rubberized well. Now that may sound goofy, but too me was important. I wanted it to replace another 128 MB ruggedized one I have had on my Keychain for 7-8 years (i think that long). It was small but always very handy to have.

Besides that, CENTON is a name brand and I have heard that you can get replacements relatively easy under warranty (no first born child or anything)
So like another poster said, if you just want some large size at a cheap price, I say go for it. If your an IT guy whose decisions can make or break a fortune 500 company and you keep the most important files of the company on your keychain, maybe this isnt for you LOL

ThunderThighs wrote:Sorry for the problem. Remember this has a Lifetime warranty through Centon.

I appreciate that you're just passing on info, so this isn't directed at you.

But that's beluga. Drive manufacturers think they're doing you some kind of huge favor with this lifetime warranty crap - and it means nothing when you've just lost 64GB of data.

I had a relatively new disk drive eat the photos of the construction of my first home, 2 vacations to Hawaii, and tons of other data. But hey - they sent me a shiny new drive for my trouble!

Anyone that buys one of these after reading these comments is a fool. Just delete your data now and save yourself $35

If your data is important this device shouldn't be the target for it - it should be a RAID set.

franigans wrote:More being made? Also of course capacity goes up as they keep shrinking this stuff, but you still get what you pay for. This is probably the left over slowest flash they cram together, really fast ssd is still expensive, there is a huge chasm of performance between between different types of ssd unlike harddrives.

and yea, thailand/mergers, the price is going to drop slow for regular drives. also the bigger drives now require hardware and os support to access 3-4tb in one partition, probably slowing adoption, just another hickup.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/inside-the-ssd-revolution-how-solid-state-disks-really-work/
good article on ssd

reviews of this on amazon are a bit scary

I bought a couple of these last time. I turned them over to my IT tech, aka wifey, and after fighting them for a bit, she was able to reformat them on our iMac, and they are just OK. Not great, but OK. I just backed up a buttload of music and photos and put them away.

Today on giveawayoftheday.com is a free utility to recover lost data from flash drives. Hmmm.....

http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/

ephobia wrote:I recommend formatting these to NTFS so you can save files larger than 2 GB. I have one of these and have had no problems formatting to NTFS unlike a few other USB thumb drives I've purchased.

Using NTFS on a flash drive can shorten it's life. NTFS is a journaling file system and writes and rewrites to the drive all the time logging even file reads and flash memory devices have a limited number of writes before they start to fail.