SanDisk Extreme Go USB 3.1 128 GB

Sandisk, You did it again. Your fastest flash drives may not me physically small, but they always deliver in terms of performance. Design is exactly like on the promo shots: full-black with shiny strip and blue LED hidden underneath it. When the drive is connected, it glows in "breathe" mode and when you copy/read data, it turns into pulsing mode. The diode is strong enough to be easily seen, yet not too much which would annoy/distract the user. Simple, informative, nice looking. As for the case, aluminium would be more in place just for the sake of looks (temperatures aren't an issue here, at all), yet Sandisk keeps sticking with plastic. Plug's ejecting and hiding mechanism feels solid enough for many years of use and helps reducing already significant length of the drive. Speeds are exactly like promised: 150 MB/s write is in range synthetically or on many small files, while on larger files You achieve stable 100 MB/s. Overall: great pick for power users, operating on large amount of data and expecting highest speeds possible. While the looks can seem cheap (big size & plastic case), it's the components that count. And that's where the Sandisk smashes the competitors.

Device tests to read / write at the stated speeds on some PCs. The initial ex-fat partition had to be re-formatted to ext4fs or f2fs to get the performance on linux, and write speed was quite a bit slower on a raspberry Pi 4b vs write on a Solidrun ARM PC / conventional skylake PC (read speed was just below 200Mb/s on all devices). Currently in use as the root drive for the Pi I've got running my DHCP server, syslog and SNMP server. Like night and day for system responsiveness even compared to a top speed SD card. Well worth it as avoided the need to buy another mini PC.

Have had this product for 18 months and it never fails to impress. I use this every day for transferring files between laptops, PCs and colleagues. It has never let me down and has never slowed down. Its average transfer speeds are around 120MB/s higher if transferring single large files, slower if transferring lots of small files but rarely does the average drop below 100MB/s. For those people who score it badly on transfer speed I would suggest checking ports and/or drivers. Depending on OS USB3.0/3.1 is not supported even on a USB3 port unless you have the correct drivers. Generally in these cases you will see speeds more akin to USB2 or even slower. Yes there are faster sticks around now but bang for buck you can't really go wrong with this.

The Sandisk Extreme Go SDCZ800-128G-G46 USB3.1 sticks are nominal 128GB good speed devices with a fast interface. They are ideal for sending big chunks of data through snailmail in a jiffybag, and also where there is not a local high speed interconnect between machines. There was some clutter on the sticks taking up some valuable space when first examined, but I always reformat new media to remove any possible Trojans etc and NTFS is a more robust file system than exFAT. I also always test them to check for speed and capacity. At first sight the retractable plug is handy, but the contacts are still just as exposed to dust dirt and static. So in reality this feature is simply a gimmick and a waste of space, and these sticks end up being about 2cms longer than normal sticks which makes them more vulnerable to accidental knocks while plugged into, say, a laptop. H2TestW gave me an average write speed of 35.2MBytes/s and 57:12 minutes to write the whole chip, double the speed of the 128GB Sandisk Ultra chips, and steady between 35.5 and 35.0 all the way through. However, I have seen this test write between 95 and 105Mbytes/s on the older 32GB Sandisk Extreme USB3 devices on this machine, almost three times faster, so it is definitely the chip that is slowing it down. Read speed is much better, at 135Mbytes/s and 14:52 minutes to verify the whole chip, but still does not fully exercise the USB3 interface, and still slower than the 32GB which were about 168Mbytes/s. Storage is shown as 117GB available on the PC, actually 126,533,763,072 bytes, when formatted as exFAT with default sector sizes. NTFS has a slightly bigger overhead so slightly less available storage at 126,452,592,640. There were no bad locations on either of my two samples. The chip runs at about 15°C above ambient, nowhere near as hot as some I've tested, but then it is not working as hard. This is actually a good thing, because running cooler should maximise lifespan and reliability. I have specifically ignored the Sandisk encryption system because I don’t know anything about its provenance and also because it is an all eggs in one basket system. If it is unavoidably necessary to encrypt any files I’ll do them individually with software I know and trust, and give each a unique pass key.

I use this stick to backup my working data from my PC daily, and it is really good. The 128GB capacity is plenty for the data I create, and the extreme range of sticks have really good transfer speeds when used with a USB 3 or 3.1 port. The fast transfer speeds mean that I backup more often, and anything that makes backing up data less hassle is only going to be a good thing.

Fab

This usb drive is really fast - copying large files to the pen drive is done at close to advertised speed (141MBs) on my laptop. Reading is even faster - 172MBs on my machine, which is from 2012. It does have SSDs though, not the HDDs. The most important thing to me is that these speeds are sustained, they don't shoot up and down like with some cheap usb drives. The blue activity light is useful too. I had 3 older Sandisk Extreme drives and they were all perfect. The only thing to mention is I broke some old ones myself. They are quite large and I would pick the laptop in a hurry and bent them. They worked fine at first, but after a few months would fail. Not the issue with the drive, but my own clumsiness. Just something to keep in mind that they are a bit longer than most pen drivers, but then again they are faster than most. I would recommend these.

This is the third 128GB USB memory stick that I have purchased in the last few weeks. I need one to transfer video from a full 128GB MicroSD card to allow viewing on TVs. The exFat formatted capacity of the MicroSD card is 116GB. This is partly because of the industry wide marketing fudge of measuring capacity as Decimal bytes rather than actual Binary bytes. However, it is still of lower storage capacity than claimed: 124.75GB when measured as specified by the manufacturer. It is what it is and until we all stop accepting this BS it will continue. However, I knew this, so I am trying to find a USB stick that will all allow all the recorded footage to be transferred to a USB stick as quickly as possible. So I need a USB stick with a minimum binary storage capacity of 116GB and fast sequential write speed. Patriot 128GB Supersonic Rage 2: Available storage decimal capacity 123.9GB, actual binary 115.4GB Claimed write speed: Up to 200MB/s - Actually 90MB/s (due to a descriptive error in specification by seller). So insufficient size for my needs but fast, though half as fast as claimed (this error has still not been rectified by the seller). Lexar 128GB S75 Jumpdrive: Available storage decimal capacity (not recorded), actual binary 117GB. Claimed write speed: up to 60MB/s - Actually 14.5MB/s (read speed was way above spec. at 208MB/s). So sufficient size but unacceptably, woefully slow for my needs. SanDisk 128GB Extreme Go: Available storage decimal capacity 126.5GB, actual binary 117GB. Claimed write speed: up to 150MB/s - Actually 38MB/s (slower than a SanDisk 64Gb Ultra at 42MB/s). So sufficient size, but way below spec. and at a premium over the slightly faster Ultra. I can't be the only one frustrated by this (deliberate?) obfuscation of performance specification. How is one supposed to buy anything if the description and/or specifications are theoretical when realistically they are fantasy! Make a stand! Test your digital storage devices and if they don't meet the claimed specification just keep sending them back until this BS stops. All tests conducted with CrystalDiskMark on Win7. Drives tested as delivered. Reformatting to NTFS, exFAT or FAT32 made little difference.