SanDisk Ultra Backup 32GB USB Flash Drive product reviews

Light and easy to carry, the new Cruzer Backup is a sleek little storage pod utilising the go-anywhere functionality of U3 portable application technology. Everything you need is stored on the device itself, and the U3 Launcher will autoboot any time you slap the stick into an open USB port. The first time you fire it up it will, of course, ask you to configure it's settings. What do you want to back up, how often, live or on-demand mode, and even how many versions you want to keep... great for those times you have made a number of changes and your editing application has autosave turned on... by the time you realise you need to go back 3 or 4 steps, it's too late... unless you told the drive to save, say, 5 version that is. Then you can jump back with ease and relief.

Now, the first thing a dedicated pendrive-using consumer is going to notice is that the Cruzer Backup feels almost too light, somewhat flimsy and almost, dare I say it, empty of innards. Relax... with technology leaping ahead, 32gb of storage is smaller and lighter than you can believe, and without adding pure 'padding weight' SanDisk have managed to keep this unit so light you'll never feel it hanging around your neck as you walk.

This lightness means that you should at least keep it tucked inside your shirt, because the slightest change in pace or direction will have it swinging wildly. A strong breeze will do the same too... so take care. You'll also need to supply your own lanyard of choice, as this drive comes stripped bare of extra, unlike past SanDisk offerings where, if it could be fitted to a lanyard they usually threw one in for you. Economic Slowdown in action, folks.

Backup was pretty zippy, with a 26mb backup of basic files taking only a few minutes. Restoration was dead easy. Browse through an opened tree-plan layout much like a Mac-ised version of Windows Explorer, and select the file(s) you want to restore... then click the "Restore" button! So simple to understand, so easy to use. Straight data transfer through Windows Explorer was even zippier, with an average write speed of 14.7m/s and read speed of 23.7m/s. (This was averaged over 7 test runs, using a variety of files ranging from a 1gb AVI to 2.5gb of assorted text, movie, music and document files.)

Overall, for those looking for a compact, portable and amazingly simple to use backup solution, this has to be the best bet you'll find on the market today. A one-touch backup system isn't exactly new, but this is by far the smallest I have come across, and has the added bonus of plugging directly into my car's stereo, or the front of my DVD player. Keep in mind however that though the unit we tested claims to be a 32gb unit, that's gigabytes in decimal, not Windows-acceptable hexadecimal, which means it will report a storage space of around 28-29gb. Still more than enough to back up the basics... and if you need to back up more than that, you should be looking at an external hard-drive instead.