Customer Reviews:
 died after 2 days January 9, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
It looked nice but after only 2 days it is dead. As others noted, it gets hot. I suspect it fried.
Don't risk it! September 21, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I must concur with the majority of comments here. It's a cute little number with a nifty little carrying case... but that's all I can say for it. This product died on me after exactly one year and 13 days of ownership (of note: the warranty expires at the one year mark... hmmm... curious, no?). The first warning that something wasn't right about the Gigabank was it's alarming tendency to overheat during use - sometimes to the point of actual discomfort if you touched it. Within six months, the product was spontaneously disconnecting itself from my system on a regular basis, culminating in absolutely zero disk activity and failure to be recognized by my system at all a couple days ago. Do not... and I repeat... do not fail to *regularly* backup the contents of this drive if you do foolhardedly buy one. Me, I'm going back to a smaller, but reliable flash disk instead.
3 Dead within 1 year May 22, 2006
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I am a professional computer technician. Repairing computers is my livlihood. My first 4 GB Gigabank was a Christmas gift in 2004. Within 4 months it failed. It would get very hot during data transfers. I/O Magic replaced it. I am very careful to protect my Flash Drives from potentially damaging environments. No one has access to them besides myself and they always stay on my person when not in use. The 2nd unit failed in about the same amount of time. It was also replaced by I/O Magic. When the 3rd unit failed in a couple of months and having been used just 4 times, I called I/O Magic and talked to a rep to detail my uses and to ask if this is a common problem. I told them that all of the units would get very hot. They said they have not had problems with these units and that they were going to replace the unit with the new 6 GB unit because of all the problems that I'd had, but they would not replace it if it failed. I have not even opened the blister pack that it came packaged in, since I'm reluctant to take the chance of losing data as I did with the previous units.
Absolute Junk February 7, 2006
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Now I'm pretty open to seeing these things on the market these days but these Gigabank things simply suck. I work in an IT support group and we deal with all sorts of modern gadgets, this has got to be one of the worst. When everyone else says they have a heating problem, they aren't joking. This thing gets hot, real hot. It also has no buffering to prevent the drive breaking when you walk around with it in say a bag or pocket. Simply shaking it can break the mechanism. If you want price and portability, I would suggest the 5GB version from Seagate priced at $100 on average. It is a bit larger but comes with a cable attached to the device (its only about 5 inches long) but it gets the job done and lacks the inherent problems of these Gigadevices. We've got a dozen of the Seagate drives here that we use several times daily. We've kicked them, thrown them, dropped them, and in general abused them to one degree or another, the most we managed to do was scratch and chip the paint on it. I would reccomend going with the Seagate version of 5GB for half the price, besides Seagate is the industry leader in hard drives for a reason, they make good drives.
DOA after less than six months of use October 29, 2005
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I work in the IT industry and am familiar with the use of and handling of PC hardware and accessories. The 4GB Gigabank was my first experience with mini hard drives, prior to the Gigabank I used flash RAM devices.
Pros: Came with a nice little sturdy ballistic nylon keychain case and backup software. The USB plug is adjustable and rotatable for hard to reach USB ports.
Cons: Would get extremely hot after sustained hard drive access. Inoperable after only 5.5 months of use!!
I am glad that I did not store any vital data on my Gigabank. I took very good care of my Gigabank drive, even went as far as disconnecting it from my system when I did not need it to avoid overheating. One day it worked fine the following week it was dead, used three different PCs and none could "see" the Gigabank anymore. I had no warning, no errors, no odd behavior leading up to the day it gave up the ghost. From now on it's strictly flash RAM devices for me.
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