SanDisk targets the Ultra Backup at those of us who have important data to backup. Available in 16, 32 and 64 GB versions, this drive features a dedicated backup button that's meant to make life easier. This is another capless (slider) design, and has a plastic body that seems rugged enough to withstand the occasional fall It's not rugged enough to handle much more than that though.

The advantage of the plastic is that this drive is extremely light, and my dislike of moving parts on flash drives seems Justified here, because the slider mechanism feels like cheap plastic.

Off topic for a bit, the reason I hate slider designs is because invariably, I have seen them go kaput. There's nothing more irritating than struggling to reach behind a cabinet to find USB ports, whilst holding down the broken slider mechanism of your flash drive so that you can connect it without pushing the USB head back into the body. The lack of moving parts makes flash drives what they are.

Coming back to the drive, it's U3 capable, and also features optional I28-bit hardware encryption. Hardware encryption ensures that there's minimal loss of speed in the name of security. The software bundle includes

a backup software that can do one touch backups, live backups and even backup versions of the selected files. In terms of performance, the drive does pretty decently with sequential data, but coughs and splutters with assorted data. Considering that most people who would want to use a backup drive would write assorted data to it, the fact that it was the second slowest in the assorted write test is a dampener.

Weirdly enough, in a category where we never thought it possible, it's the good software that makes us want to recommend this drive.



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