Verbatim TUFF 'N' TINY 16 GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive 97168 (Black) Review

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(More customer reviews)I've had my Verbatim Store 'n' Go Micro 8GB drive for over six months (I bought it before they renamed it TUFF 'N' TINY) and haven't had any problems with it. It has been a reliable, sturdy, and fast storage device, and looks great on my keychain. It's always fun when I plug it in someone else's computer and they go "What the heck is that?" "Did you say EIGHT gig?" "Must've been expensive!"
I was a little worried about buying from a brand name that is not necessarily trusted in the field of flash memory, but my fears were allayed when I plugged it in for the first time and it identified itself as a "Kingston Store 'n' Go", which leads me to believe this device is the product of some collaboration between Kingston and Verbatim, or is an entirely Kingston product that has simply been purchased and rebranded by Verbatim. Either way, I feel better about the device knowing Kingston's name is associated with it in some way.
Just for kicks, I recently ran my drive through its paces using the Xbench benchmarking program for Mac. It clocked at the following speeds:
-Sequential-
Uncached Write: 5.26 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write: 5.22 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read: 4.38 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read: 31.43 MB/sec [256K blocks]
-Random-
Uncached Write: 0.03 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write: 1.00 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read: 3.27 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read: 29.86 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Update: I've now had my Tuff 'n' Tiny for nearly a year and still continue to love every minute of owning it. It takes a licking and just keeps ticking. If I could add a sixth star to this review, I would.
Another update: Hm, it seems I spoke a little too soon. After one year and one week, my 8GB Tuff 'n' Tiny has finally kicked the bucket. It has the same symptom many have described here--it just stopped being recognized by all my computers. It doesn't show up on the desktop when I plug it into my Mac; there's no dah-donk sound when I plug it into my Windows PC. I'm willing to concede, as others have suggested, that the super-thin Tuff 'n' Tiny may be more sensitive to static shock than other more well-shielded USB drives. However, given that mine lasted over a year with fairly heavy use, I feel like I did get my money's worth out of it, so I've gone ahead and purchased the newly released 16GB edition of the Tuff 'n' Tiny. If I don't have similar luck with the new one, I'll definitely consider docking some stars from my review and selecting a different brand and a larger more well-shielded form factor for my next USB drive. I'll keep you posted.
Yet another update: I've now had the 16GB model for over a year and it's been working great. (And now that I've updated this review, Murphy's Law states it will quit working in about a week. Haha, keep your fingers crossed for me!)
And as a bonus, here are benchmarks from Xbench for the 16GB model:
-Sequential-
Uncached Write: 8.99 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write: 8.29 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read: 4.51 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read: 20.02 MB/sec [256K blocks]
-Random-
Uncached Write: 0.18 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write: 0.97 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read: 3.19 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read: 18.73 MB/sec [256K blocks]

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