I've bought both the 32GB and 64GB Centon drives Woot has offered and haven't had any real problems. They are a little slow yes, but I bought them primarily for their capacity.

I typically carry on them tons of small utilities for working on client's computers. Occasionally, a transfer file from Windows Easy Transfer will make it onto one of these if I can't setup the transfer over the network. Works great in a pinch.

Considering that USB 3.0 is just now making it into the marketplace and not commonly found in corporate environments yet, the fact that this is only USB 2.0 isn't really concerning. They are just fast enough to make a decent alternative to using a CD-R or DVD-R when you need a bootable disc only once or experimenting when making bootable media.

Granted, I have yet to fill one of the 32GB or 64GB drives completely, this might be worth it for the "Mine's bigger" conversations some people like to get into. Plus, the whole "Better to have and not need than need and not have" thing.

I am tempted to pick up a couple.

Read/Write isn't a huge concern for me for my purposes. This should work wonderfully with my Cloud FTP device (http://www.hypershop.com/CloudFTP-p/cftp-black.htm) to stream movies and music to my iDevices.

In for 1.

werdwerdus wrote:entire music collection you say... lol... I wish there was a flash drive big enough for that!

It's called a radio....just sayin

Any information about this working on Linux? The info doesn't mention it so I think not. Plus its made in China...

ThunderThighs wrote:Yes, they're aware of the problem. It may be a bit before it's fixed though. Sorry.

//picture sad face here

Thanks- I don't get the same literary impact without the images. [wink]

I cringe every time I see Centon on Woot!

Where is the Woot return policy?

If I own this big stick, can I speak softly?

I bought the 64 gig flash drive off woot a good while ago and I really don't have any complaints. It takes a bit to get really large files on, but for the amount of data storage for the price, it's hard to really call it a bad deal at this point in time. If you want a flashy drive with the same memory and faster data speeds, be prepared to be charged up the ass for it right now.

10MB/sec read and 5MB/sec write is a little slow compared to most.

USB 2 isn't bad if you get a drive that supports the spec. The speed difference in one flash drive to another, just like CF and SD is amazing. Some are dogs.

bluescreencomputer wrote:128GB, at 5MB/sec? So, if I want to fill this drive with my data, it'll take me a day and a half?

Either my late-night math-skills are way off or I need me some USB 3.0.

airborneric wrote:It's called a radio....just sayin

Have you heard the radio lately? Garbage and commercials - it's not for me...

eneal10 wrote:...Who goes swimming with roughly 100 billion bytes of data in their pocket anyway?

those who get thrown in the pool

I don't even have a USB 3.0 adapter card in our desktop PC or either of our laptops but, at this point, I just can't make myself buy a USB 2.0 flash drive no matter how good the deal is. I've got a 2GB drive, my wife has an 8GB drive and we probably have half a dozen smaller ones from 32MB to 256MB.

I'd love to have a 16GB plus size flash drive but it's gonna have to be a 3.0 spec drive.

Two of us in my office bought the 64GB version a few months ago when Woot offered it. Both of us have had data loss issues. I am very careful to always shut down or undock the device before removing it from the USB port. The performance was not an issue, but reliability is a big problem, especially for a data stick. I wold not recommend these data sticks.

A 128GB thumb drive for a reasonable price?! Verily, I live in the future.

Seriously though, anything over 32GB and I use my 2TB external hard drive. I consider thumb drives to be transfer devices more than storage devices. But this amount of space is beginning to blur the line. As has already been said here though, 3.0 would have made all the difference.

CowboyDann wrote:I wouldn't recommend using this as a back up if this was your plan. It's more useful as a way to transfer big sets of files. I would never put anything irreplaceable on a Flash drive because there's always a chance of failure.

This would probably be very nice if you have a stereo that has USB MP3 Hookup, put your entire music collection in your car for 70 bucks.

My 2011 Toyota Tundra wouldn't read the 64GB Version I bought here in May..

If I want to get one let's say to just aggravate my wife. You know let her add all the kids pics then have it fail...Would this be a good choice?

hehthuryo wrote:Am I the only one who has accidentally washed a jump drive or memory card in the washer? Try not to. So that's why it is great that it's water resistant.

Not at all, I've ran my flash drive through the washer and dryer at least a half dozen times. Keeps going like a champ though. I swear I'd need a head-shot to kill this thing.

I'm with the guy above: Nexus 7 + OTG + 128GB flash drive = music and movies storage

Pretty sure it would work, but how well would it work? Especially with a blu-ray rip

behni wrote:I bought the 64GB Centon sticks last time. All three had to be returned. YOU CANNOT FORMAT THESE TO WORK ON APPLE COMPUTERS. If you try ANY of the methods Centon suggests, it works temporarily, then the stick becomes unwritable. I won't waste another dime on Centon USB sticks because of the lousy usage I got from the three I bought.

According to a lot of Amazon reviews, the sticks become unwritable in a few months anyway. Shipping NTFS formatted sticks and advertising them to work with anything other than Windows is a chalk move imho.
"Works* with Windows or Mac!"
*and by 'works' we mean 'might work after you flunk with it'.

stormchaserbh wrote:at optimal file sizes to hit the peak transfer rate.... real world, it would take much longer, wouldn't it?

But But But .... I thought We Was In OZ Dorthy lol.

I can't recommend these. I bought the 64Gb one and was able to use it twice before it became unusable. Windows reports it as a read-only device now won't format it. Apparently this is a common issue for this company's devices. Save your money.

I would not recommend anything from Centon. I bought 2 32-GB through woot late last year. The first one arrived DOA, went through their "lifetime warranty" support and got a replacement. I still had to pay for shipping for the return. The second one was fine until I needed to reformat it as a NTFS drive and it couldn't because some bad sectors. I went through the process again. The process wasn't that bad but I was paying to ship the defective products back to them

I have been using both of them to transfer files intermittently. Yesterday, one of the drive became "unrecognized" usb device in all my PC's.

I am writing them off completely, not wasting my time nor money and I would not recommend them to anyone.

I never comment on these forums, but it needs to be said: Centon DataSticks are junk! The last one I bought from Woot only worked sporadically, to the point that it was utterly useless. DO NOT BUY.

rfonewatt wrote:Windows box, Jyoung?

Try this:

1. Start > search bar -> CMD and press enter
2. type> diskpart
3. type> list disk
4. type> select disk # (# is the number of the USB HDD you’ve pluged in)
5. type> attributes disk clear readonly

Worth a try.

-RF

I tried everything that was suggested on their site and nothing worked including diskpart

Centon DataStick Flash Drives get the infamous "Write Protected Error" after a while. I took my 64GB DataStick Sport nine months to get the error, and Centon will replace it.

erinbalsamo wrote:Any information about this working on Linux? The info doesn't mention it so I think not. Plus its made in China...

All DataSticks work on Linux, but after a while it is likely they will get the infamous "Centon Write Protected Error" that is a common problem.

stevecole90099 wrote:why would you even bother with music at 128? I use to not care about the bit rate then one day i compared a song at 128 to the same song at 320 and it literally blew my mind i couldn't believe how much of a difference there was. and seriously? 1.3TB at 128. that's hard to believe. you would have to pretty much just download homework just to have it. I mean I like having complete albums in my collection even if I only like one song from it but even with that I only have around 250GB at 320 and the only things I don't listen to are rap metal and classical.

Oh not at all, I try to download/rip exclusively in FLAC and 320 VBR, the bare bones minimum is 192, and that's usually if it's super rare.

Sorry for the confusion.

Also,
the only things I don't listen to are rap metal and classical.

I find that very hard to believe. I'm just glad I'm not quite fully to level 6 yet

hehthuryo wrote:Am I the only one who has accidentally washed a jump drive or memory card in the washer? Try not to. So that's why it is great that it's water resistant.

Not even close to the only one. I find that they usually survive too.

I, too, purchased one of the 64GB Centon drives. I always try to use the "Eject Mass Storage Device" before unplugging it from a USB port, but more often than not I still get an error saying the drive is corrupt and asks me to format it. Luckily I found a solution that has worked so far.

Open a command prompt and enter Chkdsk X: /r (where X is the drive letter of the flash drive). It takes about an hour, but it does clean up whatever gets fouled up.

I'm only using this for temp storage/sneaker-net, so I'm okay with it.

whcodered wrote:128GB at 5MB/sec will take just over 7 hours, by my calculations.

I believeit is >56 hours. 5MB/s is 5 MBits per second, i.e. only 625 kiloBytes per second.

rachelc258 wrote:There's a part of my brain that boggles at the thought of 128 gigs on a thumb drive.

Pretty much exactly ten years ago, I bought myself a 128 mb little flash drive for $20 bucks and I was oh so proud of it. It cost about half as much as my friends were paying! It was a full 128 megs! It looked really stylish on my keychain! (I went to a really techie high school.)

Wow, thumb drives outstripped Moore's law by a factor of 10.

It could just be bad luck or funky caching but I rarely find cheap flash memory with consistent Read/write speeds. That applies to USB sticks and SD cards alike. Sometimes they reach the advertised rates, but all too often it will slow to mere KB/s and back to 5+ MB/s, all on the same file.

SSDs, however, are fantastic. I have one with a USB connector

rolandcschmidt13 wrote:I believeit is >56 hours. 5MB/s is 5 MBits per second, i.e. only 625 kiloBytes per second.

5MB/s is Megabytes/second. Sorry. Mbps is the most common abbreviation for megabits. (Or "megs" if it is your ISP's marketing department.)

whcodered wrote:128GB at 5MB/sec will take just over 7 hours, by my calculations.

USB 2 is 35MB/s (480 Mbit/s)
1hr.


(and then i read the specs..5M/s is 7hrs..my fault)

edwgillespie wrote:USB 2 is 35MB/s (480 Mbit/s)
1hr.

In real life, you get only 20-25MB/s maximum speed out of USB 2.0 storage of any kind. This datastick can't even come close to that.

I have one of their 64gb sticks, same type, water resist, etc. The speeds are atrocious!

Most times the thing will lock up for 15-20 seconds at a time and you can't even browse what's on it let alone read or write anything to it.

I don't recommend these drives at all, unless you're giving it to a person you don't like.

The name is Bond. James Bond.

eneal10 wrote:Seems like a niche product, needing to up/download humongous files at a pedestrian pace while being swimming-pool proof. James Bond needs more speed, so he can spend more time with the ladies. For everybody else, we can drag a portable hard drive around and get better transfer rates, better reliability and similar price, sans the waterproofness of this product. Who goes swimming with roughly 100 billion bytes of data in their pocket anyway?

Is anyone else disappointed in woot for peddling something widely known as garbage?