Customer Reviews

Crucial Technology Gizmo 8 GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive JDOD8GB-730

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

All of you that want a solution to have an emergency flash drive bootable on the Mac have come to the right place. I bought this drive formatted it to HFS + (plus)made it work for Intel Mac machine only, installed the basic 10.5.6 software by doing a custom install only which amount to 4.5GB, after formatting the drive you end up with 6 GB. I'm able to put all my diagnostic tools on the drive including a tool to clone Mac drives. Since I work in a university that supports 80 iMacs with Bootcamp Windows XP on one half, Mac on the other half, I'm able to boot from my flash drive should one of the workstations fail.

In order to make your bootable flash drive you want to partition the drive using Disk Utilities, select the partition tab, then select Other, there you want to change it from Master Boot Record to Apple Gui, then name your drive and load OS 10.5.6 or 10.6 what ever you have available. I'm able to boot a 20" iMac in 45 seconds from this flash drive. Believe me its fast!

I wonder if you can put Windows XP on a flash drive than be able to format the slave drive, will have to try that next.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Thank you

Dr.Phil SCU

Smaller/thinner than my other USB flash drives, feel sturdy. Cap fits pretty tightly so no fear of losing the cap. Significantly faster compares to my other 3 flash drives: LG, Kingston, and a generic one. Blue LED status is nice. I reformatted with NTSF format, comes with fat32 format I think. Have it for 1 month, so far so good.

This is pretty fast. It is very robust (went through washer dryer cycle!), And the cap/key attachment is designed well.
It doesn't have any awful software (like u3 or whatever) installed on it.
What I like about the design is that the cap firmly attaches to the device, and the cap is what attaches to my key ring. I just detach it and use it or let someone borrow it without having my keys hanging off the computer or something.

As the title shows, its dead. New it worked great, reads/rights, speed is good. . . the little blue LED flashes when in use. I never lost the cap or washed it!

Its primary use was an MP3 file server for Pioneer (DEH-P6100BT) car audio head unit where it was read from for an hour a day, 5 days a week for 6 months. During the last week it randomly failed to be detected by the HU and the spit out occasional errors. When plugged into Windows XP, XP reported no problems when the HU failed to read.

Now its not recognized by the deck or Windows and the data is not accessible.

The Gizmo is Dead!

The Good News, I heated it with blow dryer and it came back to life long enough to get my files back! :)

I got this to be on my keychain and within a few short months the usb connector had come loose and it isn't recognized anymore in the computer.

When it worked it was quick and neat,
but after a month's work,
without any special happening,
it just died. beware!

Not much to say about this guy. It's got 8gb of space and it's really fast. I noticed that copying files to/from this drive is significantly faster than working with files on my Sandisk usb key. My only gripe with the drive is that it's made of plastic and has a cap. I would much prefer a metal housing with turtle mechanism for the actual usb connector because I don't like the idea of putting the cap on my keychain and having the actual body of the flash drive hanging in the wind.

... the USB drive will. The cap attaches to your key-chain - NOT the important part, the flash-drive USB unit itself. So, as you can imagine, after a few throw-your-keys-in-your-bag uses, the flash-drive separates VERY EASILY from the cap. I lost mine within a week; thank goodness there were no important files on the unit and I have Macs with central backup or I'd be SOL.

Poor design quality. Buy a flash drive with a connection that attaches the IMPORTANT part of the device to your bag / key-chain / etc.

I bought two after reading the reviews which all said it was good. This thing died shortly after copying some files over to it. Glad I was testing it before putting anything important on it. For me this is enough not to buy a Crucial product again. Hopefully this is just a weird that happened to me. Not sure I'll try the other one, wouldn't trust it even if it did pass my initial testing. Now if I can only find the receipt. Thrown away since there was no expectation of this stuff failing.

The 16GB USB Flash Drive performs well with the xbox 360 as a Memory Unit. Requires a quick test and format sequence. I was able to set this drive up as a memory unit and transfer data from my old HDD, and two MUs for use with my new 360-S no problem. I recommend saving some $ and purchasing this versus the MS/Xbox branded flash drives.