Silicon Power 32GB Jewel J80 USB 3.0 Flash Drive, Titanium (SP032GBUF3J80V1T)

I've been through quite a number of flash drives over the years. What makes for a quality flash drive, in my experience?Price, portability, speed, durability. I've had flash drives that had maybe 3 out of those 4, but this is the first stick to nail all four.PriceThe price of flash memory varies constantly, and even day to day, on Amazon, But this flash drive is usually priced below average, which makes it a great buy because of the next three.SpeedThis isn't going to be the fastest stick you've used, but speeds are pretty good. I'm seeing typically 12 MB/s for copying photos from a SSD to the stick.DurabilityI've only had the drive for a few days, but without question - this is one of the most solid flash drives I've ever seen. Constructed of titanium, it is light and strong, and there are no visible seams that tend to separate over time on other flash drives. No plastic body or cap to break or get lost. I can carry this on my keychain with keys and pocket knife without worrying it will become damaged, with use.PortabilityWhat good is a portable flash drive if it isn't portable? Sticks with big, bulky plastic housings are too big to carry around every day, and end up sitting in a desk drawer. This design is sleek and compact. The ring allows it to sit neatly against other items on your keychain. I've also got the Kingston Digital DataTraveler SE9 (DTSE9H/64GBET), which is slightly more compact, but the ring design causes it to stick out of the keychain a bit.I love this design. It is well thought out and executed and earns a spot on my keychain!

For a few years now I've been looking for the "perfect" thumb drive and, at least for me, this is it. I've been using the 32GB USB 2.0 version of this drive for at least the last 2 years or so, and my only dislikes were the less than stellar capacity and transfer speeds. I had contacted Silicon Power to find out if they were ever going to make a USB 3.0 version but their response didn't give me a lot of hope. I'm so glad it's finally here.Other than transferring a few files around, I haven't really done any actual speed tests, and I don't really intend to. Is it the fastest USB drive on the planet? Very likely it is not. I don't really care. The only thing I need to know is that it's appreciably faster than the USB 2.0 version, and it keeps the same form factor as the older series.That form factor is what really makes this the ideal thumb drive. Even though the case isn't really titanium (it's a zinc alloy that has the *color* of titanium), it's pretty dang tough nonetheless. I've been using the other one on my split-ring keychain for a few years now with a bunch of other keys and a tough-as-nails titanium bottle opener, and there's hardly a scratch on it. The large attachment ring is fully one piece with the rest of the drive's body, making it very unlikely for it to break off and allow the drive to be lost. I've lost a few drives that way so this is a very important feature for me. The drive also fits nicely on the keychain - the thin-ness of the ring and the taper between the ring and the drive's body allows it to hang nicely with the other keys. I had another metal thumbdrive that had a very thick, square-edged ring which caused it to stick out strangely and never hang flat with the other keys. Doesn't sound that bad, but it made the whole keychain very awkward and bulky when put in a pocket.If you couldn't tell already, I'm super-excited to finally have this, and look forward to many years of use.

Worked well at first. I'm a student majoring in CS and on a budget. Most of the computers at my university don't have the software I enjoy using so I decided to invest in (what I thought) was a nice, high quality thumb drive. I ran across this thumb drive and liked the sturdy casing and large keyring.It worked well for a few weeks; I kept all the tools I needed on this drive (i.e. VCS, IDE, testing tools, projects, etc...). It was nice being able to take everything with me and have all the tools I needed at hand.The thumb drive began acting "oddly" after 1-2 weeks. Computers seemed to take longer and longer to recognize it, programs seemed to take longer to load from it, etc.Soon, the thumb drive refused to work for every port. Starting out, it worked for 50% of ports. I would plug it in to one and when the computer did not recognize it, I plugged it in to another and it worked fine.After a few days of this, it was working for about 10% of ports and continued to get worse until I was having to hop around the IT lab looking for a computer with a port that would accept it.1 month and 8 days after purchasing this item, no computer will recognize the device or the driver. My twenty page software testing report is lost and all I see when I open the device manager are hidden remnants of a driver installed long ago.$30 dollars was quite a large investment for someone who survives on 1 pack of poptarts a day, especially for a thumb drive. This is one of the first bad purchases I've made on Amazon and I am very very disappointed. When my CS friends ask me for a thumb drive recommendation, I will definitely point them in another direction.