SanDisk Flash Memory Vault 8 GB Flash Drive SDARC1-008G-U46

 (22 customer reviews)

The SanDisk "Memory Vault" *feels* like top quality. The heavy metal case is impressive! The "breathing" red LED lends a nice futuristic impression.

When you get right down to it though, this is just another "USB Flash Drive". As best I recall, all flash memory will retain data for "100 years", the key technical factor is how many times a particular bit is rewritten. This is the only flash drive I've seen though which appears to keep track of it's usage and switches to "read only" mode after excessive usage.

Unlike most flash drives, the SanDisk "Memory Vault" is not light, portable or easy to use (compared to other flash drives). Certainly it's portable, but it has a nice hefty non-trivial weight. It is larger than every other flash drive I've owned (3.25" x 1.75"). But the most inconvenient is that it uses a cable to connect to your computer rather than plugging straight in.

This is a nice impressive flash drive, but you'll have to judge whether...Read more

As with the other reviewers, I'm not sure how to rate the SanDisk Memory Vault. Its main selling point is the claim that will reliably store data for up to 100 years, so there is no practical way to test this claim in the short-term. The potential appeal of the Memory Vault is based on assumptions that most available storage media (optical media such as CDs and DVDs, USB flash drives, and hard drives) have a limited lifespan measured in decades at the most (Google searches can provide more info on these). The argument goes that if you want your valuable photos and videos to last beyond this, you need archival-quality storage. Frankly, I'm not sure how many people stay up at night worrying about this, since there's probably a higher risk that any given storage medium will become obsolete before the data itself becomes corrupted (e.g. floppy drives).

If we put this issue aside and look at the product itself, below are my observations to date:

Pros:
- The...Read more

Long term data storage is a relatively big problem now that we're putting more and more of our lives on computers. Normal optical media supposedly only lasts "up to" 10 years. Normal flash drives lose data over time. Mechanical drives have parts that wear out, etc. There is a company bringing DVD-R-like drives and discs to the market that supposedly last at least 1000 years (they need special drives to be written to, but anything can read them). I've very curious about those, but I don't think they're out yet.

At any rate, SanDisk's flash memory vault supposedly lasts longer than normal flash memory-"up to" 100 years. Sandisk provides a website with info about it, but it doesn't really explain why it supposedly lasts longer. Just that supposedly it's using a custom controller and flash that last better.

They don't say, but one thing they might be doing is using SLC flash instead of the far more common MLC. SLC costs much more, but can also last much better...Read more