Customer Reviews

PNY P-FD512U20-RF E-Commerce 512MB USB 2.0 Portable Drive

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

This PNY flash drive has been a workhorse for me for the past 8 months. I'm a realtor and use it to keep my contracts and photographs synchronized from my home office and my business office. Using my PNY flash drive and the bundled Microsoft Briefcase application, I'm able to do it easily. My PNY drive is ALWAYS in my pocket with my many keys and cards - scratched and banged constantly. Never a problem, never a hitch. When I upgrade to the 1GB drive, why would I buy another brand? Right, I will not.

This is my first day using this product, so far so good. It does what the product description says it should do. However, the photograph above is of a product that may exist out there, but not of the product I have, even though it certainly IS a PNY 512 Mb USB portable drive. The shape/design is a little different, but more importantly:

1. No write/delete protection switch. If you look at the photo above and expect it to have the same switch that prevents deletion, which is present on all the other models of lower capacity by PNY - you won't find it.

2. The lanyard on all the other similar PNY products is attached to the body of the stick, whereas on mine the lanyard attaches only to the cap. There's the potential danger that the stick may drop out of its own weight (though the cap attaches to it quite securely). If you're worried about this, carry it in your shirt pocket and use the pretty lanyard for something else.

3. The ton of information that comes on a minidisk for this product is useless, they all talk about the other models that look like the photo above. For one thing, there's a green led and a yellow led, and I'm left to guess that the difference is that one lights up for USB 1.1 connections and the other for USB 2.0 connections, or that one lights up for Windows 2000 and the other for WinXP - who knows. Worse, there is NOBODY TO TALK TO. I can't find a link on the PNY site to communicate with their tech support, you'll find lots of FAQs but no one to talk to if you have questions.

4. What drive letter is assigned to it when you use it on Windows systems - a total mystery. It comes up as D on one system and E on another - I suspect it finds the first available letter above C and uses that. I did assign it a specific letter on one system, but it still came up as another letter on a different machine, and I won't know until I'm back at the first system if that means I need to start re-assigning drive letters every time I use it on a different system.

If it turns out that it does find the first available letter, that's a vast improvement on previous versions, but it would be nice to have that documented somewhere.

Other than that, it works as advertized, I'm happily transferring files back and forth.

Wouldn't you know it, as soon as I make the point about the difference between the product and the photo above, Amazon was kind enough to update the photo. Just so there are no doubts, as of this writing, what you see is what you get.

I am a college student and bought this gadget for two classes. It works very well. Fast transfer, easy to plug into the USB ports, I just simply loved the thing.

However, after about two months, the little plastic things in the outer casing broke therefore causing the USB plug to slide into the casing. I couldn't plug it in.

I was finally able to pry the plug out and retrieve my files, but I took it back to Best Buy (sorry Amazon) and got a different brand.

My flash drive was used all the time...everyday. So, if your going to be constantly plugging it in and out of computers, I wouldn't recommend this one.

I regret having made this purchase. It was really cheap so it looked like a good deal, but the plastic is really weak and it broke after a week of use!

The housing is very fragile. Thought I got a great deal, purchased on a 2 for 1 sale. The first one broke the third time using it (I chalk it up to my son's carelessness). The second one lasted about 3 months. Both broke at the same point, the metal port end, cracked/broke from the housing end. Data loss was significant in hours, research and grade not to mention pictures and reference data. I recommend that Amazon not even give them away!!!!!!

I've had this drive since August (that's five months). I've never had a problem with the drive actually working, though it is slow in being recognized on any of my computers. However, the case is cheap, thin, plastic, and it broke in my hand when I removed it from a port last week. I've had to jimmy it back together and tape it in order to retrieve my information. I won't be buying another product from PNY.

I bought this 512 MB drive for $6 after the $15 rebate. So I cannot knock it too much. The only glich I've seen is that both gray ends can be pulled off. One is the cover, so that is fine; however, the first time I pulled the drive out of the PC's usb port, all I got in my hand was the gray outer cover. The drive (green part) stayed attached. You just have to grasp it tighter to get the drive out.

Also when inserted, it shows up named as "Udisk 28X", so maybe it isn't a high speed drive. I've not had any slowness with it though.

I thought that this flash drive was above average in performance. Works well between a Macintosh and a PC. I liked the feature--missing from my last flash drive--of easily emptying the drive after use without having to some fancy erasing techniques. In other words, the PNY worked like a real hard drive. I would like the manufacuters to explain in detail how to attach the tread to the laniard. It took me a while to figure it out.

I usually use PNY for backup data, save assignments and photos.

PNY is portable, useful flash drive and it is fully compliant with USB 1.1 and 2.0 systems. Simply plug PNY into an available USB port and your computer will automatically recognize it as a drive - no additional drivers needed! The speeds of 12Mb/sec with USB 1.1 and up to 480Mb/sec with USB 2.0 port.

Makes you wonder what we did before cd-roms! Great device-- works in any of my computers-- great to back up large amounts of data.