Introduction

If you ever owned a digital camera chances are you have heard of SanDisk. They specialize in memory cards in all sizes, formats and speeds. It’s no surprise then that SanDisk also has a healthy lineup of USB memory sticks.

Today we take a closer look at the new Cruzer Micro USB drive, which has received a major overhaul compared to the old generation.



Inside the flashy red retail package you’ll find an instruction manual, a 50 download voucher for free music, the Cruzer Micro has a small application installed called “U3” which is works as a self-contained launch-pad under Windows 2000 (SP4+) and Windows XP. You get a nice start menu at the right side next to the system clock; you can take applications and their data with you wherever you go. By default you get Skype and McAfee AV (30-day trial) preinstalled as well as their in-house password manager utility. You can also create a password protected area on the USB stick where you can safely store documents.



While the U3 launch pad application is certainly a very nice added value, there are free-ware alternatives like MojoPac which will let you run a complete WinXP OS on your USB stick to take with you, also password protected.


Specifications

From their product page we gathered the following details on the Cruzer Micro USB Stick:

Capacities: 512MB, 1GB, 2GB, 4GB, 8GB, 16GB

Dimensions: 7.94mm x 20.6mm x 57.15mm (D x W x L)

Hi-Speed USB 2.0 certified (backwards compatible with all USB 1.1 ports)

Retractable USB connector

Brilliant amber LED

U3 smart enabled (On Win2000 SP4+ and XP only!)

2 Year Warranty

Let’s take a closer look at the Cruzer Micro ->

Looks

The Cruzer Micro comes in black with a white slider in the middle which lets you pop out the USB connector.



Comparing the Cruzer Micro U3 with the older Cruzer Mini you can see that SanDisk managed to cram more data into a smaller section. The old drive pictured below is 512Mb in size compared to 4Gb (up to 16Gb) for the Micro.



A size comparison next to a set of keys, the Cruzer Micro is quite compact and the USB connector is well hidden inside. I would have preferred a small wire to let the USB dangle from the key ring as the small metal ring limits free movement.



Once hooked up to your system, depending on the file system you will get up total free size close to 4Gb, but not quite. Under Windows XP SP2 and formatted FAT32 the size was 3898Mb.



Wear

I had the SanDisk Cruzer Micro hooked up the key ring for a good week and traveled around the country;



It was hard to spot any signs of wear on the hard plastic of the Micro, it survived without as much as a scratch after a week of abuse.

Let’s take a look at the performance ->

Test Setup and Comparison Material

The SanDisk Cruzer Micro USB stick was compared to:

• Kingston DataTraveler 2.0 4gb (photo)
  
• Sandisk Cruzer Mini 512Mb (photo)
  
• Kingston DataTraveler HyperX 4GB (photo)

The following test setup was used with Windows XP SP2 installed; we used ATTO HDD Benchmark v2.34 and HDTach 3.0 to measure performance:

Intel Test Setup
CPU	Intel Core 2 E6400 @ 2.8Ghz (from CSMSA)
Cooling	Coolermaster Hyper TX
Mainboard	Intel 975X Bad Axe (Modded by Piotke)
Memory	2 * 1Gb PC6400 OCZ
Other	XFX Geforce 8800 GTX Coolermaster Real Power M520 520W PSU 2x Western Digital 74Gb Raptor SATA HDD

Performance



HDTach Access Time is very low with the SanDisk Cruzer Micro, 0.6ms is extremely fast!



Read speeds are better than the two older drives but not by much, burst speed is noticeable higher though at 20Mb/s.

ATTO HDD Benchmark allows you to test the performance of a storage media by measuring the time it takes to read or write a file of 256Mb; the difference with other HDD benchmark is that ATTO will read/write that data file in different size chunks, going from 0.5Kb to 8192Kb. In our test we used 4kb to 8912Kb setting.

The smaller transfer sizes are applicable for overall Windows operation like Page File actions (~4kb) and small file transfers (.inf , .ini, .dll files). Larger 100Mb+ files are transferred in much larger chunks. Normally you can expect that hard drives do rather well with small chunks, better than SSD in any case, once the file transfer size increases performance will go up for SSD/HDD and USB sticks.

If you want to run an applications straight of your USB stick, high performance at small transfer size is important. If you plan to use it primarily to transfer large files, file transfer speed at chunks of 512Kb are more important.

Let’s see how these three USB sticks did in the READ test:



At around 64Kb file chunks the performance for all USB sticks flattens out and reflects the performance numbers seen by HDTach Read test; do note that the average read speed is lower then the burst speed, 6Mb/s lower, which is noticeable when transferring larger files.

At smaller file transfer chunks the performance of the Cruzer Micro is above the other and comes out first.



The write test reflects the read test in that aspect that at 64Kb the performance line flattens for all the contestants, it is at the lower size chunks that a difference can be seen. The old Sandisk Cruzer Mini comes out on top here again but closely followed by the new Cruzer Micro. Overall write speed of the Cruzer Micro is not very high compared to the more expensive Kingston DT HyperX.

Conclusive Thoughts

With the Cruzer Micro SanDisk improved two important aspects of the older Cruzer USB disk: durability and size. The new stick has a retractable USB connector which slides inside into the hard plastic cover; this without compromising on the overall size.

Another noteworthy change is the hook-up hole which allows you to put it on your keyring. The original had a wire (good!) the new one a small metal ring (less good), but the mounting hole in the drive was just plastic in the old one, and is now reinforced with a metal bar. This is vital as you’ll notice in the photo here, where I had to drill new holes in the Cruzer Mini as the wire cut through the plastic housing after years of use…

Performance wise the Cruzer Micro fails to impress with below average read and write speeds, hardly able to outpace the older USB drive. Nevertheless with burst read speeds at 20Mb/s and constant write speeds at 8+Mb/s is Vista ReadyBoost certified.

The strength of the Cruzer Micro lies in its diminutive size and its lower price, the Kingston HyperX costs around $/€50, the Micro can be found at €10/$20. Quite a difference in price wouldn’t you say?

If speed is secondary to price, durability and size the SanDisk Cruzer Micro will definitely not disappoint you.



SanDisk Cruzer Micro 4Gb
+ Very Durable Design
+ USB connector slides inside housing when not used
+ Low Price
- Average Read/Write Performance

We thank Eelke and SanDisk for making this review possible. Check back soon for more USB stick coverage!