SanDisk 256GB Ultra Fit USB 3.1 Flash Drive - SDCZ430-256G-G46, Black

So far I have two of these flash drives. Both are currently connected to my laptop via a USB 3.0 hub. One is older than the other. Both have been functioning well. I have the 256 gb version on both. Nice amount of space for not a lot of money, helping me keep my hard drive cleaner. At one point I did have the older one directly connected to the computer. Ive not noticed any difference in the transfer rate since I swapped it to the hub, which was something I worried over. Both have nice transfer speeds, more than geared to my needs. *Edit, August 2021* Since I originally wrote this review sometime in 2020, I have invested in several more of these drives. I now have somewhere around 12 to 15 or so ranging in size between 64 gb all the way up to the 512 gb version. They are used in multiple applications. Three are TV drives, attached to the three smart TVs in the house (unless Im adding to them, in which case they spend some time in one of the two USB hubs I have.) One is about to be geared towards my Wii, and the rest are computer storage for my desktop and laptop. Those computer storage ones are the ones that live in the hubs full time. I use them for everything. Ive a massive music collection, and that is now split between about 4 of the 512 gbs. My movies are on another, one is for computer file storage (which is my catch-all drive for program files, pictures, and documents.) I could keep going with the uses I have for these, but the long story short is I no longer have to worry about losing everything if my hard drive fails me. Because even if one or two of these lock up, loss will be minimal. Speed is still not an issue at all, And to date, none have locked up on me, and they see quite a bit of use.

I will be making future purchases of this product.

Works as advertised and holds lots of stuff.

Fastened to a lanyard to prevent losing

I used this flash drive in my Tesla Model 3 to record video when in Sentry Mode. My Model 3 formatted the flash drive and began recording.

Best way to use it in the back of the desktop (USB) or in your laptop, when removing it do not go Rambo on it, take your time, it is plastic so as long as youre delicate with it, youre all good.

I have over 400GB of videos. I would normally steam them to TV but the TVs Wifi broke. So, I decided to put them on a 512 GB USB flash drive and plug it into the TVs USB. Heres what I found... 1. A 500GB SSD shows actual available space of 465GB after formatting. This 512GB USB flash drive only has 460. Thats a shortage of 17GB. 2. After copying about 410 GB of videos, the SSD shows about 56 GB available. That adds up to 466 and matches its capacity. After copying the same videos to this 512 GB flash drive, it shows about 13GB remaining. That adds up to 423GB and very inefficient. I formatted both in Windows 10 as NTFS with recommended allocation unit size. 3. The copy speed/performance is terrible. It took 2:25 hours overnight to copy the 410GB. In comparison, I copied about 61GB to my 2TB Samsung SSD over the same USB port in about 4:35 minutes! That would be about 31 minutes for 410GB (not 12 hours). Bottom line... if you need convenience and small size, this is good. It is also easy to lose! If you want speed and efficiency, look for external portable USB-C SSD.

There is a reason I spend more money for a SanDisk drive. It works. I have never had a problem with SanDisk. I did go cheap once. I quickly returned to SanDisk.

Capacity is great. Small profile is great. That claimed 130MB is read speed. Please note... write speeds state UP TO 15X over USB 2 speeds. Key words here are UP TO. I use this device to store flac music files for playback in my car. I have plugged this drive into USB 2, 3 & 3.1 ports for writing purposes. I have seen extremely marginal performance differences between USB 3 & 3.1 (fluctuates between 35 - 55 MB when writing anywhere from 200MB - 2GB at a time). On a USB 2 port I get speeds around 20 MB on average. I will post test results and adjust figures as needed later as I am going from memory at this point. On another point, the frame of this no longer appears to be made of metal. I would say it is made of some type of composite material. I believe this was done with a purpose on the manufacturer to alleviate the heat issues with the previous model (which I also own) While it still gets warm while writing, it no longer gets hot to the touch like the previous model did. The heat dissipates much quicker. Given that, I do worry about the longevity and duability of this device should it have to be used and plugged in frequently in many devices. Overall, it serves my purposes. Write speeds could be better and durability could be an issue. Hence, my reason for three stars. **********Edit********** I have included Crystalmark tests (1 @ 500MB in size for USB 2 & 3). I did 5 tests while having it plugged into a USB 3.1 gen 2 port (1 of each @ 500MB, 1GB, 2GB, 4GB & 8GB). Speeds start dropping down the larger the test file was. Speed breakdown for the images is as follows for those that were wondering: USB 2.0 image is the read speed of 40.22 & write speed of 17.01 USB 3.0 image is the read speed of 126.2 & write speed of 50.41 USB 3.1 gen 2 images are the remaining 5 images as well as the windows copying images Just for a test, I copied over an approximately 4GB video file to the drive via the USB 3.1 gen 2 port (see the windows copying images). At the halfway point of the file, the speed starts to drop off and never recovers. Looks like the video file maintained a good 64 MB until the halfway mark.

This has proven to be an awesome little external storage device. I bought it in December and already have it filled up. 1 million times better than a big heavy pain in the foot external hard drive!!! Zero problems.