So I wanted to treat myself and bought what seemed to be the best you can get. First thing I’ve noticed it won’t work at USB3 speeds (and also in Windows there will be that popup with “this device can perform faster”). Other USB3 drives are working fine and also it does the same in linux so it’s not an OS issue.
Otherwise stable and quick (although within USB2 limits, that’s 30MB/s instead of the advertised almost 200MB/s).
I said there must be a firmware update or some settings or any kind of support. Boy, I was wrong! There isn’t even a support PAGE for the Cruzer Extreme! Yes, you buy a stick that’s basically a small SSD, more expensive than many hard drives and it doesn’t have a support page. Or for any other stick from Sandisk for that matter, there’s some general page with 11 different types of sticks (presumably all the current models) and just two (totally useless in my case) downloads: Ultra Backup and Secure Access.
In the meantime I also discovered that the disk doesn’t show as a fixed drive and you can’t flip the removable bit! Also I discovered this page: http://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/12830
It says: “SanDisk is beginning production of flash drives configured as fixed disk in 2012 to meet new requirements for Windows 8 Certification” so it seems I’ve got really old stock (as it’s November 2013). This could also explain the USB3 incompatibility. Even if I bought it from Amazon (and from actual Amazon not Marketplace) just to avoid fakes and such it seems I’ve got really old stock. And they didn’t even had it in stock! I don’t blame Amazon much as you can’t tell which are the certified disks because they’re called the same! Looking on the box yes, there’s no Win8 logo anywhere (and again this is end of 2013). But hey, Vista and XP are there!
I wasted already almost 2 days just searching left and right if really this can’t be somehow updated but no, it seems not.
