Review on 💾 128GB SanDisk iXpand Flash Drive for iPhone and iPad in Black/Silver (SDIX30C-128G-GN6NE) by Doug Virden

** Update July 26, 2016: SanDisk Support was able to resolve an issue with protected files on a Mac. The solution was to format the iXpand drive and download the latest version of their SecureAccess application. I have raised my rating from 3 to 4 stars. What follows is the original review. Since everything is "in the cloud”, the USB stick sometimes seems to die out. But this iXpand flash drive is really very good because of its unique ability to connect to iOS devices. This is the first flash drive with this feature. This way, transferring a bunch of photos from my iPad to a friend's phone is a breeze. Let's say we both have the iXpand app (a free app that manages file transfers) installed on our devices. One feature I really like: on my iPad, I can use this device to back up all my Instagram and Facebook photos (it works with Picasa photos too, but I don't use Picasa to store photos). This feature works really well just by uploading all the photos from my account. What's nice is that every time I do a backup, photos that have already been backed up are skipped. This is good because I have almost 700 photos and I don't want to download them all every time. It took about 5 minutes to backup 700. BUT. There are some limitations and issues that might make you reconsider this disc. * First, due to iOS limitations, you cannot just transfer any files. Photos, music, videos and contacts work well. That's all. So if you have other iOS items e.g. B. Documents created in Pages or Microsoft Word, this drive is not suitable for backing them up. However, the back is different. You can take files from your Mac or PC, transfer them to this drive, and then open some of them in iOS. For example, if I create text files on my Mac, I can transfer them with iXpand and open them on my iPad*. Secondly, the hard disk has a file protection function (encryption). In order to transfer secure files from my iOS device to a PC or Mac computer, SanDisk security software must be installed on the computer. I have found this software to work well on my Windows computer (Surface Pro 4) but NOT on my Mac (2015 Macbook Pro running OS X El Capitan 10.11.5). The Mac application that needs to be launched cannot see the SanDisk drive. I get an error message saying "This app only works on a SanDisk flash drive." NOTE. If you don't need secure file encryption, this drive works great on both Mac and Windows, making it easy to transfer files to and from your device. The problem only occurs with protected files and only on a Mac.* While I like the design of the small drive, the small iOS connector on the drive isn't hidden as neatly as it should. After using the device on my iPad Mini (which has a rather thin body), the drive "stretched" a bit, causing the iOS connector to constantly stick out. Should I buy this flash drive? Think about how you want to use it: if you just need to transfer photos, videos, music, and contacts, and secure files aren't important to you (or if you are, but you use Windows), this is a great solution Selection. Just be aware of the restrictions before making a purchase.