Sometimes, stuff just arrive at the YugaTech HQ without me knowing who sent them or where they come from. This is the case of the Sandisk Memory Vault — a ruggedized flash drive that promises to last your photos up to 100 years.
This is not your typical flash drive which you often use to store photos and videos or for transferring files around. The Memory Vault wants to be your digital bank on precious memories.
The Vault is purely made of metal (certainly not aluminum because it’s heavy) with a microUSB port on one side and a red LED light on the other.
The weight gives you a good idea on the solid build-quality of the portable drive (if you hold a pebble of the same size, I think this one is still heavier).
What’s funny though that in the age of really small micro-SD cards that carry up to 32GB of data, this large and heavy Sandisk Memory Vault only stores up to 8GB (there’s a 16GB variant). So you’re not really paying for the amount of storage here but the longevity of the drive.
In a recent study commissioned by Sandisk, it was revealed that during calamities such as a fire, people rush off to save their old photos ahead of most other items (including pets and relatives). This is the reason why Sandisk introduced the Memory Vault.
Problem is, there’s no way to really tell the integrity of the drive and if it can last a 100 years. The only thing I was able to check was the write speed which is around 8.8MB/s.
If you’re looking for durability, then an 8GB Sandisk Memory Vault that costs Php2,500 might not be that expensive. However, if you’re just looking to transfer files and carry then around then you might consider the more affordable ones.
What a stupid gadget. My data will last 100 years on this??? In 5-10 years, USB drives (or “Vaults” or whatever) would most likely be obsolete. We all know that technology is ever-changing. So what’s the use of this?