Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

** Update July 26, 2016: SanDisk support was able to resolve the issue with secure files on the Mac. The solution involved formatting the iXpand drive and downloading the latest version of their SecureAccess app. I've updated the rating from 3 to 4 stars. The original review follows... With everything "in the cloud", flash drive storage sometimes seems like it is becoming extinct. But this iXpand flash drive is really quite nice because of its unique ability to connect to iOS devices. It is the first flash drive I have ever used that has this feature. So, transferring a bunch of photos from my iPad to a friend's phone is effortless...provided both of us have the iXpand app on our devices (a free app that handles the file transfers). One feature I really like: On my iPad, I can use this device to back up all my Instagram and Facebook photos (it also works with Picasa photos, but I don't use Picasa for photo storage). This feature works very very well, simply downloading all the photos from my account. What's nice is that each time I perform a backup, it skips the photos that are already backed up. That's good, since I have nearly 700 photos and don't want to download all of them each time. The 700 took about 5 minutes to back up. HOWEVER...there are a few limitations and problems that may make you reconsider this drive... * First, due to iOS limitations, you cannot simply transfer any files you want. The ones that work well are photos, music, videos, and contacts. That's about it. So, if you have other iOS items...for example, documents you created in Pages or Microsoft Word...you this drive will not work for backing them up. However, the reverse 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, when I create text files on my Mac, I can use iXpand to transfer and open them on my iPad. * Second, the drive comes with an option to secure (encrypt) files. In order to transfer secured files from my iOS device to a PC or Mac computer, the computer needs to be running SanDisk's security software. I found that this software works fine on my Windows machine (Surface Pro 4), but NOT on my Mac (2015 Macbook Pro, running OS X El Capitan 10.11.5). The Mac app that needs to run fails to recognize that the drive is a SanDisk drive. I get an error message that says "This application only runs on a SanDisk flash drive." NOTE: If you do not need secure file encryption, then this drive works fine on a Mac and on Windows, allowing you to effortlessly transfer files to/from the device. The problem is happening only with secure files, and only on the Mac. * Finally, although I like the design of the little drive, the little iOS connector on the drive does not get tucked away as cleanly as it should. After using the device on my iPad Mini (with a fairly thin case), the drive has "stretched" a bit, making the iOS connector always stick out. Should you get this flash drive? Consider how you plan to use it: If you only need to transfer photos, videos, music, and contacts, and if secure files don't matter to you (or if they matter, but you are using Windows), then this is an excellent choice. Just know the limitations before you make your purchase.