Micro review — Sandisk ultra backup 8GB

Memory sticks litter my desk like spent cartridges. Size is unimportant; a quick fix to copy over Gossip Girl and 350Mbs is all I need. I clumsily rifle through these little black fingers of data and grab hold of the 8GB model from SanDisk. The SanDisk Ultra Backup will do, for now.

What’s so special about it? Is it the retractable USB port? The “backup” button which doesn’t seem to do anything? Or is it the orange light which glows like the amber crystal last seen holding dinosaur DNA in Jurassic Park? It’s just another memory stick with nothing to add to this world. But hey, at least it’s been benchmarked for your amusement.

It says here that the read/write speed is 18.5Mbs. Considering that the maximum speed of USB 2.0 is 60Mbs, I’d say this is acceptable. Copying in real life was another story. A 4GB file dropped transfer speeds to the region of 6Mbs. That’s not going to fly with this cowboy.

As for the backup button, it refused to work. I installed theSanDisk bloatware which came packaged in the memory stick, fiddled with some settings and tried to backup random files. I furiously clicked the damn button. It wouldn’t play ball.

The memory stick comes in a few flavours and I would have liked to have tested the 64GB or 32GB version, but was saddled instead with the el-cheapo 8GB model.

Ask me to describe the build-quality of the memory stick and I’d say “cheap and flimsy.” It felt like with an accidental wiggle of the device, I’d snap it in half.

I wish the backup button had worked for me. If it had, I’d have more positively rated the SanDisk Ultra Backup. As such, I can’t recommend it and at a price of US$17, it’s far too pricey when compared to cheaper, and far larger, memory sticks of the same ilk. Burn.