SanDisk Cruzer Titanium 1GB Flash Drive

Features of the SanDisk Cruzer Titanium 1GB Flash Drive

The most noticeable feature of the Cruzer Titanium is the same place the drive gets its name from, the titanium colored metal exterior. SanDisk designed the drive to withstand 2000 pounds of crush force and still operate. Several reviewers have actually ran over the Cruzer Titanium with their cars, and the drive still functioned afterwords.

The Cruzer Titanium is available in two capacities; 1GB and 2GB. For keeping organized and taking your important information with you on the road, the Titanium is U3 enabled. Included U3 apps are:

• CruzerSync
• SignupShield
• Skype
• Avast Antivirus

The Titanium measures in at 7.14mm x 19.05mm x 57.94mm and is so lightweight you will hardly know it's there. Connectivity is via USB 2.0 for fastest speeds, but the Titanium is USB 1.1 compatible as well. No drivers are required on Windows 2000 or XP for use.

There are some out there that don't care for U3 and won't buy flash drives that have the application on them. Good news for the U3 haters, SanDisk includes an application on the drive that will permanently remove the U3 application from the flash drive.

Drive Management

SanDisk gave the Titanium an easy to use U3 control panel. You can manage your data and the U3 applications with a few clicks. Removing applications plus downloading and installing them is a snap. You can also tell the Cruzer to run or not run U3 at start up by default, as well as mark one specific application to run each time you plug the drive in.

USB Connector

Looking at the image of the SanDisk Cruzer Titanium 1GB Flash Drive above you might wonder how exactly you connect the drive to your PC. SanDisk uses an ingenious method to retract the USB connector into the body of the flash drive so no caps are required to protect the USB connector.

SanDisk Cruzer Titanium 1GB Flash Drive in Use

Installing the Cruzer

There is literally one step involved in installing the Cruzer Titanium, you plug it into a vacant USB port. The Cruzer is thick enough, that you may have to unplug something near it if you are using a crowded USB hub on the back of your computer. My Windows XP test machine recognized the Cruzer and launched the U3 LaunchPad immediately. It's important to note here that you must remember to use the LaunchPad to "eject" the Cruzer before you unplug the drive from your computer or risk data loss.

Installing U3 Applications

Thanks to the LaunchPad that SanDisk uses, installing U3 applications is a breeze. You can use links in the LaunchPad to go to either SanDisk's own U3 application download area, or go to the official U3 site to download applications there. Once installed, you can launch the applications directly from the LaunchPad. Quick, easy and simple.

Benchmarks & Testing

The first of the benchmarks I ran on the Cruzer Titanium was with HD Tach. HD Tach allows some measurements to be performed on flash drives and gives us some performance numbers we can use for comparison. The test results gave a random access time of 1ms for the Titanium. Compare that to the random access time of the OCZ Mini-Kart of 60.3ms and you can get an idea of how fast the Cruzer titanium is. HD Tach gave an average read time for the Titanium of 12.6 MB/s as compared to the Mini-Karts 9.8 MB/s.

The next test series was with SiSoftware Sandra 2007. Using 512b files, the Cruzer Titanium showed write speeds of 767 Kb/s, read speed of 4435 Kb/s and a delete speed of 3848 ops per second.

For the final real world usage test I copied a large 584MB file to the Titanium, copied the same file from the Titanium to the computer and then deleted the file from the flash drive and timed the operations start to finish. It took 47 seconds to write the file to the Cruzer Titanium, 37 seconds to copy the file from the Cruzer to the computer and only 1 second to delete the file from the Cruzer.

Final Thoughts on the SanDisk Cruzer Titanium 1GB Flash Drive

To date, the SanDisk Cruzer Titanium 1GB Flash Drive is the fasted flash drive I have tested. It is also on of the best looking drives I have seen. While not as svelte and portable as the OCZ Mini-Kart, it is faster and has U3 built in. At the end of the day I think many will find the performance and U3 applications to be great. If you are looking to buy your first flash drive or upgrade your existing drive, the SanDisk Cruzer Titanium 1GB Flash Drive is an excellent choice.