The ATP ToughDrive – Not so tough

Tags: ATP, Community News, Portable, Product Review, RMA, Security, Tech Geek

Wednesday, August 30, 2006 2:10:00 PM

I made a decision a while ago to move my entire working environment onto a portable USB Drive. In order to do I figured I would need the strongest and most durable pen drive on the market. I shopped around and found the ATP ToughDrive. It boasts lightening fast transfer speeds, water resistance and even shock resistance. This looks very promising so I bought one.

A week later the drive went dead. 0 bytes free, 0 bytes in size, etc.. Couldn't format the damn thing, couldn't recover any of my information. I wanted to throw it at the cat maybe then it would be of some use.

Being a guy with some (very little) patience I returned that drive via the whole RMA process. They instructed that I will have to wait over a month for this to happen and since the store couldn't be sure that the manufacturer would recognize the defect I had to purchase a new one. I just wanted my portable environment back online so I agreed.

Less than a week later the second one died. That was this morning. The exact same symptoms as before. My patience has ran out, and now I have to go through the whole RMA process for this drive as well.

On the ATP Web site I filled out their contact form, and no response yet. Nor do I actually expect to hear back from them. I can only hope they care about thier customers...

I don't want to give up on this whole portable environment thing, so I decided to go with the (hopefully) best. SanDisk has been producing removable media for years and they have a drive actually cased in Titanium. I ran up to the local shop and bought one.

Lets hope this sucker doesn't blink out on me like the garbage ATP drive.


21 Comments

  • si said

    The Cruzer works a treat, had one for 6months+ and except for the blue LED failing, no dramas. Travels with me in my backpack on my bike every day. I run TrueCrypt on the whole disk and haven't had a single problem. Recommanded!

  • Looner said

    I have a toughdrive that I bought for similar reasons. Mine went dead after a few days as well. Unfortunately I don't have access to the store where I bought it. The thing is pure junk.

  • ecoshift said

    I've had a 2gb ToughDrive for over a year and it's the fastest most reliable drive I've owned - no failures, no hesitation. I had a 1gb titanium Sandisk before this. It wasn't too bad once I got rid of the U3 software. Not nearly as fast as the ToughDrive though.

  • Ken said

    Wish I would have seen this earlier. Recently purchased an 8 GB Toughdrive ~ 1.5 months ago. About a week ago it went bad. Memory maxed out and files became unreadable. (ie #$%!*^{} type names) which MS didn't recognize. Ran scandisk and defrag (took forever) and able to get 6.4 GB back but files gone. Having a friend run some recovery tools on it to see if there's any chance I'll get any of my files back. Fortunately, I had most of it on my desktop but some important files I only had on the 8 GB -- learned my lesson there :( I liked the security feature, which is the remaining 1.6 GB I was testing out and hope to be able to open up again so I get the full 8 GB use I paid for. Noticed files were taking some time to copy/move to the toughdrive. This should have flagged that something was up. Wrote it off that it was slow due to the design and the security feature. Have I mentioned how much time has been wasted trying to fix it, which doesn't include the RMA process I'm sure I'll be doing in another 1-2 weeks after calling no joy on recoverying the old files. Will still see if I can work w/it but so far Toughdrive won't get my recommendation for a reliable secure technology. ----- Gary...got the same NOT FOUND USB DISK when I tried to run the security utility on the certain computers. Could never figure out why I would could open it on one desktop but not on another, on one laptop but on another. Assumed it had to be something w/the configuration or my profile's access level.

  • Ken#2 said

    This is an update to my previous entry on the 8 GB I own. Was able to get the files back after running some system recovery tools on it. Recovered 28 GB from all the files I've moved/copied back and forth over the few months I've owned it. ATP sent me the USBDiskUtility file again to unlock the secured partition. Definitely plan on keeping a backup someplace else but going to give the toughdrive another try but be on the lookout for any symptoms previously noted.

  • Steve said

    I bought a 2GB toughdrive in september 2006, and it has been tossed around, has been bent multiple times, and still works perfectly. The best USB key I have ever had!

  • Bob said

    I have a ToughDrive 4GB that is over a year old. It is fast and reliable. I was thinking up upgrading to the 8GB, but I guess I'll wait based on your findings. Always make sure you have backups, because the media itself only has a limited number of write cycles so even in the best case, it won't last forever and when they do go, usually everything is lost.

  • eric said

    I have 2 toughdrives a 4gb camo version and a 2gb....the 2gb is 2 years old with having been bent and through the wash and dryer twice...still works perfectly...the 4gb is the fastest usb i have worked with....have tested numerous friends with other versions, still faster...maybe i am lucky..??? sorry to hear some poeple have had a bad experience....I also have an mvix and the toughdrives are not recognized there...so compatibility may certainly be an issue...

  • ecoshift said

    I've got two tough drives. 2gb and 8gb. They have never failed me. The 8gb accidentally went through the wash last week. Worked fine after. These drives are always recognized by every machine I put them in. Pull 'em out, put 'em back in, always recognized. I bought a voyager years ago, but it was so fat it was impossible to use the second usb port on the back of my laptop. Then the connector bent and connection broke. Dead drive. I bought two 4gb patriot drives, that are much more finicky. Usually recognized by my machines when I put them in, but if I pull them out without the "safely remove hardware" step, the machine won't recognize them again until I reboot. What a pain. Tough Drives are the best in my book.

  • jeremiah said

    i have had my toughdrive 8gb for bout 3 years now, and its still going strong...maybe i got the one in however many to work as advertised.

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