Product Description

Cruzer Micro is an incredibly small, portable, and smart USB flash drive. The small, compact size fits easily on any keychain. The retractable USB connector design eliminates the need for caps and protects the connector.s, profiles, and more - everything you need for a familiar computing experience on any PC, wherever you go. Cruzer Micro allows you to easily carry and transfer key documents, pictures, music and video clips from one computer to another. The new retractable USB port eliminates the need for caps and protects your USB connector.

Product Details

• Brand: SanDisk
• Model: SDCZ6-016G-A11
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 2.60" h x 1.85" w x .16" l, .22 pounds

Features

• CRUZER, MICRO, 16GB W/U3 TECHNOLOGY,

Customer Reviews

Nice drive that works with Mac OS X
It's nice to have so much storage in such a small space. The retractable USB port is the best feature -- I hate losing those little caps that other brands have.

Like some other reviewers, I'm on a Mac and I'm happy to report that the drive works great and can be reformatted using OS X's Disk Utility. Some earlier U3 drives had problems with Macs.

The only drawback to this drive is its blinking light. When you plug the Cruzer into your laptop, you'll have a bright orange pulsing light in your peripheral vision. Very annoying! Fortunately I only use this drive for short periods of time, to transfer files between computers. If I was using it all day long I would need some way to cover the light.

UPDATE: This drive worked great between Macs. I eventually used this drive to move some files from my Mac to a PC. When I plugged the drive into the PC, the U3 partition was still there, and U3 ran automatically on the PC. Even though I had previously reformatted the drive using my Mac, it didn't get rid of U3! Unfortunately, it appears that U3 went through its "first time" wizard and reformatted the drive, causing it to lose the data I had copied from my Mac. I ran the U3 uninstaller (available from the support section of the U3 web site). Once U3 was truly gone, it behaved as a normal drive.

A REAL review of the Cruzer Micro 16 GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive
Let me make a true review of this PRODUCT. I'm sorry to hear that people were disappointed that they didn't get the drive for a penny. I'm also sorry to hear that a reputable company is getting flak for a problem that wasn't caused by them.

And, a reminder, you can get this drive for only $7.00 by signing up for the Amazon Credit Card. Amazon credits back $30 for having signed up for their card. Not quite a penny, but...

First, I already have a SanDisk Cruzer 4GB unit. The thing I initially disliked about the Cruzer U3 is the fact that they come with built-in software which is supposed to allow you to boot the drive from the USB drive and run specialty applications from it (Called the U3 Launchpad).

If you didn't understand that when you bought the drive, and you weren't aware that you could remove that software, you might hate the drive.

If you do use U3, you will have to pay for most applications. But, if you want to ensure that some presentation you made in PowerPoint will be able to be viewed at your next interview... you get a U3 PowerPoint viewer and boot from your USB drive on their computer (without PowerPoint) and VOILA (hopefully).

However, some say that that booting proceedure is certainly less than reliable (this may have changed since I bought my 4GB version; so don't take that as gold-standard knowledge).

However, if you take the extra initiative to go to their website and download some software, the software will REMOVE that self-booting application junk and you will end up with a full-sized 16 GB USB drive that mounts on just about any XP system and above without any special drivers needing to be loaded.

http://communities.sandisk.com/sandisk/board/message?board.id=u3&thread.id=730

WARNING! If you copy stuff to the drive, then remove the U3 Launchpad, you will lose the stuff you copied to the drive. Back up whatever is on the USB drive before you remove the U3 Launchpad.

I mount my 4GB USB Drive on 5-year-old XP Professional computers at work which have been frozen with a program called 'DeepFreeze' (meaning that, each time they boot, will always revert back to their original condition).

Even though they're like that, the drive has never not mounted properly on any of the 13 different computers in the Tech Room even though they were frozen BEFORE I tried using this drive.

I've never had the drive do anything strange (like not mount properly) and it has always transferred files incredibly fast.

So, for those who want to be able to boot mini-applications like PowerPoint, if you have the money to purchase the applications, then this might be the drive for you.

Second... Once you have removed the auto-boot U3 Launchpad software (which is very easy to do), you'll also love this drive.

If you found that you, later, want the U3 Launchpad feature, download the U3 Launchpad Installer:

http://www.sandisk.com/driverdownload/drlogin.asp?driverId=163

Click on 'Don't Register' (or register) and download the 1.19MB installer (as of 12/10/08).


....

Also, there might be an added feature for those who might want it:

I have not yet tried doing it, but some out there are successfully made this USB drive boot from XP. Your computer needs to have a BIOS setting such as 'Boot From USB' that you would choose before you booted the computer; but if it did, and you installed the Operating system properly on the drive, it could boot from the USB drive.

http://communities.sandisk.com/sandisk/board/message?board.id=u3&thread.id=2114

http://www.google.com/search?q=bootable+usb+flash+drive&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US

Amazon's fault?
I deleted my previous 'review' after receiving the following in my email from Digital Media Source...

"We at Digital Media Source apologize for any inconvenience. Due to an error on Amazons part they somehow reduced our listing price to .01 on the 16GB Sandisk Cruzer (from $35) yesterday morning. While we noticed the error within a couple hours of this occuring there was by that time over 1750 orders placed for over 6000 units!! This for an item which we only usually sell a few per day. (we only stock 20-30 units!!!) Obvously any rational buyer would realize a price of .01 on a $35 item must be some sort of mistake. We do not have the inventory nor the finacial means to honor these orders at that price. We are a small family run company. A 180K loss would put us out of business. In fact we wouldn't even have the finacial capability to obtain 6000 units. While we apologize for any incovenience this may have caused we had no choice but to cancel theses orders. Thank you for your understanding and we once again apologize for any inconvenience."

Thanks Digital Media Source (5 stars for the explanation). Amazon, how about cheering up some customers?