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USB Flash Drive Round-up
Adam writes "Ars has published a massive USB 2.0 Hi-speed Flash drive roundup, with 10 USB
2.0 flash drives that they've tested on three OSes. They rate the drives by performance, durability, and features/accessories (including the crappy software that no one uses).
Definitely a good read for anyone who has recently sat on their USB thumbdrive!"
Just wondering ...
Alison
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
Still, the most important feature is that it's bootable. (And some still aren't) I love having Feather Linux on a keychain. The Cruzer Mini has done me well.
(\_/)
(O.o) This is Bunny. (> <)
Oh good lord...another dupe.
From TFA:
Previously, most people had no idea what a Flash drive was, but now you can be sure to find most people with even a basic Flash drive in their pocket or purse.
Uh, no. Whoever wrote this must make a living pickpocketing or mugging geeks only.
Article originally posted 10 days ago on Ars. You're really keeping up with the news, eh Zonk?
With the new flash readers as stock on most new computers, these may be unpopular by next year.
i bought one, and I'm not really happy with it : if you attach the drive at your keychain, you can NOT insert the drive in a USB port without the keys : the litlle cord is FIXED on the drive ! This is very annoying, since I have quite a bunch of keys (10+.. hey, there's a poll suggestion) and the whole mess tends to get tangled between the KVM cables.
if you buy a drive : make sure you can unplug it from whatever it is attached to. But make sure that the drive itself doesn't unplug too easily : I lost my previous drive cause the click-'n-hold system wore off and it would unplug at the slightest pull
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
They seem to have neglected this flash drive that comes with a free MP3 player.
What a lame comment.
'10 days ago' isn't very old. The news is still relevent and interesting.
The job of the editors isn't to repost news articles as soon as they happen like some RSS newsfeed.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
Some of the newer arcade video games accept select brands of USB memory cards. However, they tend to have whitelists such that only pure flash drives, and not hard drives or music players, are recognized.
"Article originally posted 10 days ago on Ars. You're really keeping up with the news, eh Zonk?"
This just in. The world will end tomorrow! React accordingly.
Still, the most important feature is that it's bootable. (And some still aren't)
Are BIOS upgrades generally available for those older mainboards that have USB ports but no ability to boot from USB storage? For instance, I use a Dell Dimension 4100 computer manufactured in fall of 2000.
I opened that page up accidentally in Safari instead of Firefox, and man, now I remember why I installed Flashblock. Ow. Ow. OW OW OW. 3/4 of the page is flash advertisements!
Please help metamoderate.
Any idea why the OSX test yielded results 5MB/s slower than Windows?
dom
The PQI stick is absolutely amazing. I have one and leave it in the cargo pocket of whatever pants I'm wearing and hardly remember it's there until it's needed. My roomate also has one (he actually got me mine for this past Christmas) and he has put his through the wash twice already and it still works perfectly.
One thing that's weird in the review is they act so shocked that the I-Stick can be so small and still be so good... but have they ever opened up any other USB thumb drive? Most have what looks like a I-Stick inside them. The case broke off my cruzer titanium (yeah, its titanium, but the part that holds the two halfs together definitely was not!) and I used to carry around the inside piece after that which was about the size of the I-Stick, but of course was not as strong of plastic and couldn't survive like the I-stick has.
Just my $0.02
I use it all the time, very unobtrusive and handy, my only worry is that I'll lose it admist a shuffle of papers, or down a crack in a desk. Also, the wallet caddy broke quickly, because I don't take my wallet out of my pocket before I sit down. I think the caddy counts as another one of those afterthoughts.
I taped one into the PCMCIA slot filler for my laptop, it's kind of a neat place to hide it.
The other problem is they are rather pricey. They are expensive. The cheapest one was $46 bucks. They can get to be over $100 dollars.
What we need is another jump in floppy disks. Like when it jumped from 720k to 1.44 megs. The #1 file type that I carry around are documents. And some PDF files, some powerpoint presentations can get to be big.
With all the innovation, we run a risk of having multiple products doing the same thing, and different computers supporting different hardware. For example, I really wished that all computers had a CD-RW. My computer lab has just DVD drives. It does not make sence, it is a lab, who is going to watch movies in a lab? But writing data to a drive is needed.
The anwser is to keep the #1 standard of the past 20 years. Floppy drives were the standard, every PC had a floppy, you could take your disk and know with 100% certanty you could read the data. There was no problem of "I brought my zip disk... huh? You don't have a zip drive?". Lets work on making a floppy drive take a couple leaps. I expected the past couple years for the 1.44megs to double a few times, to be around 11.52 megs if it doubled 3 times the past 6 years. That size disk would be big enough for most files, and people would not need a usb keychain, zip drive, and 3 other methods of transporting files.
Plus, am I the only one who thinks USB keychains are flimsy. A friend had the ipod shuttle and I kept thinking the USB part was going to snap off the cheap plastic. It stuck out of the computer, one bad move, one slip or shove into it and it would snap.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
i need to get a thumb drive to replace my muvo that i had been using. i was in lab at school where they have the computers on the floor and i plugged it into the front usb port. i managed to kick it with my big feet and broke the damn plug clean off. i was hoping to resolder it back on but the solder points ripped off the pcb.
It seems like the FA didn't conider the fact that some USB drives simply *don't fit* in some USB ports. I think it's one of the most annoying thing about those little things.
I have one of the Bonzai drives with remove SD card. It is slow, it is bulky. But its nice to be able to pull the memory out of my camera or Sharp Zaurus, plug it into the Bonzai and sync to the PC. It saves battery life on the camera or PDA for sure.
I think the only thing good for someone who did that would be a first aid kit...
-SJ53
For the most part, all of these units are the same with only minor variation in features and performance.
What I am looking for is a usb thumbdrive/fob/whatever that has strong anti-tamper security features. I'm talking about on the level of FIPS 140 Level 4 which, among other things, means that it probably encrypts all of its contents and if it detects an attempt to physically get at its innards, it erases the data. Note that levels 1 through 3 are all pretty much the same, but level 4 is a big leap up in protection from level 3.
I need this to store all my drug deal accounts receivables,
and to keep my wife and her electron tunnelling microscope from finding my pr0n.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Yes, I got one of these two days ago, on the same day that I got a Cruzer Mini (for work). The PQI I-stick wasn't recognized in Win2k, no matter what I did, wasn't consistently mountable in linux, and kept crashing my WinXP machine. It may have been an anomalously bad little piece of hardware, but that's ridiculous.
Argh! Somebody please instruct these guys on how to build charts. You don't change the line markers between charts! You have to read the legend for each individual chart.
Everyone is becoming a geek.
I'd rather have one of these.
Once there was an interface standard that supported the basic "something that looks like a disk drive" concept, the war was essentially over. Who cares if different people choose flash, or miniature disk, or anything else that might come along? So long as they can all plug into that USB port and behave pretty much the same to your host computer's software, there's no reason to mind that a single removable media format is not king.
What's left for the USB media revolution is its use in bricks and mortar commerce. In the B&M scene, they are constantly trying to create schemes to get you to carry a device (e.g., smartcards) to let them "touch" your data. The information benefits for the B&M store are clear, and the example of store cards ("10% off if you have your QFC card!") shows that they can offer rewards to induce the information sharing.
But who wants to carry 15 different magstripe cards for 15 different stores? The answer is in those little USB devices that more and more people have in their pocket. What's needed is an open standard for sharing data on a USB device -- a standard that lets the customer control what the merchant can store on the card, and what information the customer is willing to share with that merchant.
Consider the following scenario. I walk into a store I've never visited before. They tell me that if I sign up for an "affinity card", I'll get 30% off today's purchase. But now, instead of spending 15 minutes filling out a lengthy form of personal information, I just plug in my disk on key. Up comes a list of personal profiles I've created. I pick the one I'm willing to share with the store, select how much device storage I'm willing to let the store have on my USB device, punch a button, and I'm done!. When I return that store, I can just plug my pocket USB device into their socket to qualify for discounts.
You can already purchase password database applications designed to run from USB disks. These let you walk up to your Internet cafe machine, plug in your USB disk, and gain access to all your many encrypted passwords for logging into various web sites. There's no reason the same sort of thing can't be extended to "logging in" to B&M stores.
Previously, most people had no idea what a Flash drive was, but now you can be sure to find most people with even a basic Flash drive in their pocket or purse.
I thought this article was fairly informative, but their writing sure could use a little work.
What about CD-RW? Practically every computer can read them and most can write them too. The discs are very cheap and you can find great deals on drives too.
Does anyone know of a good sulution? It would be nice to take advantage of the over priced memory I have for my digital camera. Ugh, wish this thing took honest to God CF or SD instead.
Download Opera 9 (in the BETA forum)
Why is it that none of them have write-protect AND are bootable? Both of those are pretty high features on any geek list.
Even though they think the rubber is a gimmick I can say no sir it is not! I've been looking for a memory stick for ages that could live on my bike/house/work keychain that sits on my bike through all kinds of shitty weather, looks like this one will withstand all the rain god gives and vibrations a bike pumps out unlike countless wimpy mem sticks in the past. woot! /me runs out to buy one!
moo
Does anyone know of a flash based device like the Shuffle that handles Ogg?
is a way of quantifying the durability of these things, but they suffer the same limitations of compact flash cards or memory sticks being as that they're the same thing, no? How many times can we jam it in and rip it out before the connnecter gets all loose and starts shorting things out?
What?
Definitely a good read for anyone who has recently sat on their USB thumbdrive!
:)
Shouldn't that be called a "Bumdrive" now?
In all seriousness, though, I've been trying to find reviews on the Creative Labs MuVo TX FM 1GB. I'm very interested in getting one, but I want to hear if anyone's encountered issues with it. Tom's Hardware had a glowing review of the MuVo TX (non-FM), and their only gripe seemed to be the lack of an FM radio.
Anyone here own one? Seen a review? Heck, *written* a review? Link me please
> anyone who has recently sat on their USB thumbdrive!
Does plugging it into the back of your laptop and then dropping your laptop on the floor back-end first count too?
The USB plug was ripped off. Being soldered back on it physically worked, but was at a 70 degree angle to normal position, so it wasn't portable anymore.
my poor usb stick... *sob*
That article didn't discuss my main concern about USB Flash drives - longevity. Flash memory used to be quite limited in the number of write cycles per block. What is the limit on these modern devices? One hundred thousand, one million, or what? And which devices (if any) have the write-leveling that you sometimes hear about, and is it built into the USB drive?
Washed and dried in my pants pocket and didn't lose any data or have any problems. Can't get any better than that.
This guy is way out there
The iPod shuffle 1 GB is more expensive then every 1 GB drive reviewed.
I have had one (512MB USB 2.0) for about 6 months now. No problems whatsoever. The driver built into XP work seamlessly. Mac OS X 10.3.x also recognizes it out of the box. I don't know about 2K, but in 98 I just downloaded the driver from the website, installed, and it worked flawlessly. Never had a problem. The credit card size plastic carrying case is a great way to transport it, too.
I have been recommending it to others and have yet to hear a complaint.
Previously, most people had no idea what a Flash drive was, but now you can be sure to find most people with even a basic Flash drive in their pocket or purse.
Really?
As long we're operating on anecdote, in my office of about two dozen folks, two have a Flash drive. If you add iPods in the mix (as a easy file transport device) we go to five people. I wouldn't say most people quite yet.
You know what?
I picked up a PQI stick a month ago, and the 1GB has been working perfectly for me... It works on my Linux desktop (Ubuntu), our windows machine, and every Windows machine at work I've tried it on. The only problem I've had with it thus far is that it doesn't work in the Apple USB keyboard. Apparently it wants more power than the keyboard is willing to transmit. But it still works just fine plugged into the back of a g4 or the front panel on a g5 workstation.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
If you can think of a way to persuade Dell, HP, and IBM (excuse me, I meant Lenovo) to ignore economics and add high-capacity floppies to all their systems, you're a lot smarter than I am.
Perhaps I misremember, but I seem to recall that 3-1/2-inch 1.2MB floppies have only been universal for the last ten years or so. Before that, a lot of people still used the older 5-1/4 inch floppies, which came in various formats and capacities, not entirely cross compatible. For example, pre-AT systems had 360K floppies that could be used, but not formatted, in the 1.2 MB drives that were standard in AT-compatibles. I remember seeing systems with three floppy drives, for people who needed to share disks with AT, pre-AT, and laptop users. Which still didn't solve the problems of sharing disks with Mac users (Apple had a proprietary floppy format) or with older laptops with low-capacity 3-1/2-inch drives.So much for floppy nostalgia.
What a dumb thing to say. The question is whether a shuffle deserved a spot in the review, not whether some arbitrary quota of Apple commentary had been reached within the review. The fact is that Apple makes a computer that deserved benchmarks, and they also make a thumb-drive that deserved review.
I read the review and I felt some temptation to go out and buy one of these drives, particularly since my current thumb drive uses USB 1.1 and is three years old. When I read the grandparent post suggesting a Shuffle, I had a Homer Simpson D'oh! moment. Like, how could I have forgotten how much cooler it would be to pay $45 more, and receive all the great features of a Shuffle?
So I totally agree with the grandparent post. A Shuffle really deserved to be included in this review. Do the Shuffles perform comparably to the other drives mentioned when it comes to transferring files? I have no idea, since it wasn't in the review. I wish I knew.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
Luddite.
Even at 512M, there will be so many songs on your device that a display is very useful. Why buy the iPod shuffle if, for about the same amount of money, you can get an MP3 player with a display?
The iPod shuffle is a low-cost Chinese-made MP3 player masquerading as a brand-name item and fashion statement, just because Apple is selling it.
I understand that older PCs don't boot from USB - so no surprise there. But why are some of the the USB sticks bootable and some not? Aren't they all implementing the same standards, and just adding their features on top (like crypto drivers or whatever)?
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The iPod shuffle is a pretty lousy MP3 player and a pretty lousy USB storage device: it has no display and it keeps music and data files in separate areas.
You can get lots of USB MP3 players that let you play MP3 files from the file system and that have a display.
RTFC! (the "C" is for Comments, or rather Ars' discussion section for this article)
Comment by Deffexor (Ars Audio/Visual Moderator):
The problem with including the iPod Shuffle in the review was that we then would have had to include a bunch of other USB based Audio players in the review. Then to make matters worse, we would have had to benchmark/test the audio players, etc. This article is already 12 pages and I wasn't going to push it beyond that...
The good news is that I'm planning a portable audio player (flash based) round-up for May and will include the iShuffle.
Mobile phones used to be expensive and interesting, as well as useful for drug dealers who wanted to call Colombia for free, so they'd get stolen, especially if you left them visible in your car. But these days, at least in the US, nobody bothers them any more. Cell phones are cheap enough to make that you tend to get them free when you sign up for an overpriced cellular plan, or kids who can't afford that can get prepaid phones in the 7-11, so there's essentially no resale market except for the good ones (where you can also buy extremely cheap long-distance phone cards.) Perhaps the fact that the US is mostly not GSM affects that as well - you usually need to register the phone itself with the cellular company, so it's traceable, as opposed to simply popping your SIM card into a better phone. Since the crime has stopped paying, it's just not worth the trouble.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Firewire is faster than USB 2.0 for hard drives, but flash-based devices have significantly slower access speeds than hard drives, so the speed of Firewire wouldn't be a factor.
-Richard L. Owens
I wonder why the Iomega Micro Mini drives were not included in the review. If you include the PQI's somewhat necessary enclosure, the Iomega model is smaller than the PQI and a better form factor (can't lose the Iomega's swivel cover). As far as I know this is the smallest drive on the market right now, and they're priced to move. Still I'm looking forward to more models that use the low profile USB jack like the PQI.
One simple rule for its versus it's
I noticed that newer drives are not including the write protection switch. Can anyone explain why that was ever useful? I'd figure that people would be more prone to accidently write protect their drive and not know why it doesn't work.
Just another endorsement...
I've done the exact same thing to my I-Stick and had it come through the wash and the dryer with no problems.
Back when they first came out, I got one for my digital camera, because it was much easier than haggling with the drivers that talk to the camera itself, and the flash cards in the good camera were removable. So when I was thinking about buying a USB stick, I realized that I had the cable, and I had a bunch of flash around from the camera, so why bother. And now I've got an iPod Shuffle, which works well as a flash drive as well as playing music. (Haven't gotten around to installing Knoppix on it yet :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Anyone have any insight as to the good/bad idea-ness of this?
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
Now that most people are on the net and send email around instead of bothering with floppies, we'd finally gotten rid of the floppy-based virus as a relevant threat. But USB sticks are starting to bring it back. It's not as serious a problem as it used to be, since most people have anti-virus software, and most people move more bits around by email even if they have USB sticks, but it's non-zero, and it'll get worse as virus writers rediscover the opportunities. Good Times Ahead!
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
so far ive gotten a mouse to work in the usb-keyboard, so dont be surprised when usb-sticks, etc dont work.
Fortunatly, there are some thin ones. I randomly bought one (Fry's loss leader) that happened to be thin (PNY) and came to appriciate how much less hassle it was to use. You really could put two side by side for that raid-0 stripe, or just fit into an open port without having to jam it.
Sure, you could do that, but it's simpler to use encrypted filesystem drivers on your PC's operating system so you never store unencrypted data. I don't know how cooperative most USB sticks are about using NTFS instead of FAT, but there are other approaches as well. And if you need to carry around software to do it, you can usually keep it unencrypted on the drive...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I put my flash drive on one ring and my keys on another ring. Both rings are on a small version of those devices used in rock climbing (I forget the name) where one side is spring loaded and opens under pressure.
With this setup, it's easy to separate the flash drive from the keys and plug it into a computer.
I sure do wish I could remember the name of that device. It has a vaguely triangular shape.
Anakin Simpson: If you're not with me, then you're my enemy--ooh, donuts!
are always going to have that problem with any higher load device on a non-powered hub
i dunno what the power consumption of a typical flash stick is but i'm willing to bet its more than 100ma. With usb you are allowed to draw 100ma without asking and can request more up to a max of 500ma but a bus powered hub can never allocate you more than 400ma (as it can only request 500ma from the upstream hub or computer) even in theory and i think most won't allow more than the miniumum 100ma.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
okay, so you've been to microcenter in boston. do we need to know your life's story?
Does anyone know if the SanDisk 512 MB is bootable? This review says no, yet other reviews say yes.
Curious fact to see that in windows, read speed peaked at 22MB/s while on mac it was 17MB/s
Mozilla is faster on windows that on linux too. On most stuff i see, windows drivers are always more optimized. Anyone has different examples?
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
Wait- wasn't some slashdot reader lecturing me recently about how ArsTechnica guys "buy all their stuff" so they're impartial?
So much for that, you're just like the rest. Samples samples samples. Whee.
Please help metamoderate.
The era of the flash drive may be short lived.
I bought a USB Flash drive (512MB) last summer and carried around with me everywhere (school, work, home) to transfer files. Of course I was always worried about losing it or having it break in some sort of unfortunately accident.
Now I just use GMail to make my files available everywhere. No worries about losing it. No worries that it'll break (well, I suppose a big quake in CA might do that...) and 2GB of storage.
One time I accidentally left my 256MB Memorex USB drive in my pants pocket prior to washing them in a load of clothes. I find my drive still in the pocket of the same pants as I took them out of the dryer. To my surprise, the drive still worked, and I was glad it did since I had a lot of crucial data on it.
I have a USB 2.0 Attache device from PNY. I also have their USB 1.1 version, which ends up having some significant differences. Their latest revision uses cheap plastic with a somewhat fugly color scheme. The plastic is so thin that when the drive's LED turns on the light bleeds through. It works just fine and I've had the older version for about a year now, but I do have to say that I'm disappointed in the direction that has been taken (durable casing, tasteful design -> cheap casing, not as pleasing to look at.) The one thing they DID get right in the USB 2 version is they included a hole at the bottom of the device that is large enough to put it onto a standard key chain. The original had to be threaded first.
Is booting from a USB device motherboard dependent? I searched through the boot order of my BIOS but I can't seem to find USB on there. I think the next step in the progression of portable storage is the ability to transfer from one drive to another without a computer. Maybe even wirelessly! A small lcd browser window that displays file names, maybe a few buttons for sending and receiving. You just point it at someone else and send them a file. Of course, they would need batteries and Wifi. I guess it would start to resemble an MP3 player more than a thumbdrive. I'm still hopeful though.
My iStick works great on all OSs, even on Linux (Xandros). Maybe you got a bad stick and should return it.
The Sony Hi-HD is a new mini-disk format that can hold up to 1GB of data and music. But the real bonus is that hardware manufactures could use the same form factor that the floppy drives use in PC chassis and replace them with a Hi-HD drive. Also, the mini disks are small and enclosed in their own little caddy like a floppydisk is.
The specs in PDF format can be downloaded here
http://www.minidisc.org/keep/Sony_Hi-MD_Spec.pdf
Life is not for the lazy.
i'm trying to read the graphs of benchmark tests they ran, but it's so confusing to understand which line belongs to which flash drive. they use only 3 colors (why? who knows) and alternate the rest with thick/thin and solid/big dots/small dots. just makes it so confusing to really see who is better in that area.
HD Trailers
why are the called thumb drives?
I the UK, they're generally called "pen drives" (prolly cuz a lot of them have a pen clip on them for putting in your shirt pocket) or just "usb memory sticks" or simpley "usb drives"
I'm trying to figure out why they would be called "thumb drives" but it's not coming to me...
And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour Isaiah 3:5
Super fast little unit. I bought the 4GB model a few months ago for like US$450, and it's been worth its weight in gold. I carry installers for antispyware and free antivirus software on it, as well as a bootable image of BartPE (which unfortunately, by the way, takes forever for the ISO to load into the RAMdisk set up by the Win2K3 SP1 NT loader, no matter how fast your flash disk is... any way around this on boxes that give a BSOD without the ISO trick?).
However, do not *ever* open the "disk" it presents to the OS in something like WinHex then tell WinHex to write 00h to all user-accessible sectors as a way of securely cleaning it up before repartitioning, reformatting, and reloading stuff onto it. The wiping seems to irrevocably fuck the unit beyond repair, by apparently blowing away some config sector of flash or something. (Apacer's fixing utility doesn't seem to work properly on the 4GB model, not even after they emailed me a different version.) I recall in some USB-flash-disk-controller-IC datasheet (probably not the same one Apacer uses, but they're all probably pretty similar in this regard) I read that the controller itself requires a few sectors of flash for housekeeping, sizing, configuration, etc. One of the things you (the manufacturer) could set was the number of LBA sectors it would report to the host machine. I suspect Apacer set this number a little too high and included part or all of the keepout region the controller requires as being reported and exposed to the host OS, causing this issue.
I went through two units before I figured out exactly what was doing it -- but to Apacer's credit, they exchanged it both times at no charge (I paid shipping both ways, which in a padded envelope with a tracking number cost me US$3.85 each way).
The Apacer HT202 and HT203 units are beautifully-designed. I didn't want one where I could ever lose the cap, because if you know me, you know the cap would be gone in a week. The thin rubber-coated stranded steel cable is a very secure attachment point, and makes sure that cap goes absolutely nowhere you don't want it to.
I don't have the balls to try washing it in my pants pocket, though, since it's NOT sealed. I wish Apacer would pot them with RTV silicone or something which would also give them more shock resistance, not unlike the SanDisk Extreme CompactFlash cards. I don't know how they avoid the silicone releasing acetic acid when it's curing, though -- wouldn't this be bad for the metal traces, pins, joints, discrete components, USB connector shell, etc?
In short, before even reading the review, the HT203 (and Apacer's support) get my one-point-seven-thumbs-up stamp of approval!
I got a Micro Mini 64. It's small and stylish.
But the chain broke soon after I bought it,
and it doesn't reliably stay closed.
That's why I currently don't carry it with my
keys as I planned.
Here's one.
I don't see how you can seriously have a real review for geeks without including this baby, no disrespect intended towards the folks at Ars.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
I have one of these. The design, I agree, is pretty good, but the software that came with it was crap. I installed it and partitioned the drive for 3 partitions (one secure). Every time after that the drive was plugged in, it blue-screend my computer. That was in XP.
When I uninstalled the software, the blue-screen problem stopped, but I could no longer access the secure partition. I tried to repartition the drive, but that required installing the software again, and as soon as it was installed and recognized the drive...yup, blue-screen.
I finally had to find the software from the original manufacturer (my drive was labeled a "GE" product, and its their drivers that were bad). Since then, it hasn't been problem, but I'm not running a secure partition, either.
Does anyone have experiance using one company's software on another's drive? The Lexar's software, where the secure partition doesn't require installing anything to access, sounds nice, but can I put it on a I-Stick?
Best part of these is the morons at work that save their important data to them instead of to the network, and then lose them. It's always fun to be able to tell them they're screwed and not have to help them.
no, but you would be wrong to say that you had some pizzas
copyright © 2005 Flamsmsmark the ravings of a melancholly i
I wonder why the Iomega Micro Mini drives were not included in the review.
Because due to the Click of Death, we don't talk about Iomega anymore. Nor do we send them Christmas cards. We do invite Belkin and others though for drinks.
The floppy worked well as a standard for many years. And it has never really been replaced. The CD-RW was never a replacement. USB flash drives are getting closer, but they are unecessarily bulky.
What is called for is a new standard form factor. I want a storage medium to bring with me along with my credit cards, in my wallet. It should hold at least 50-100 MB, with the possibility of increasing down the road. It should not have to be (much) thicker than a credit card; physical size, not storage is the key point.
A USB flash drive is something you have to remember to bring along with you when you think you're gonna need it. This thing (let us call it the wallet disk) I would always have available in my wallet, wherever I go. That would be nice.
But what fatass can break a flash drive just by sitting on it? I would venture to say I could safely jump on mine a few times.
I hate grammar Nazi's.
Would have been nice to see this reviewed on one of the more popular distros. I've got an (admittedley aged) 64Mb usb stick, a 'Disgo' model from a few years back when they cost £80 or so for the size I have. Problem I have is intermittent recognition with FC3 and others. Bit of a pain in the proverbial...
*having "fallen" and "landed" on my USB drive* -- One in a million shot, doc!
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Unlike probably everyone else here, I've had my PQI Intelligent Stick for quite a long time - almost 3 years now (it's the purple USB 1.1 model, 128MB).
In my opinion, the form factor is brilliant, and being able to keep it in your wallet is indispensable. It will literally always be near you, you don't ever think about it, unlike having to pick up and check the charge on your mobile phone, MP3 player, etc.
However, due to having it with you all the time, and its small form factor, I reckon it's more suscepible to knocks, hits, etc., which cause data errors. (Although mine has never been through the wash - it stays in my wallet.) I got around these errors the cheap and easy way: by making multiple copies of important files on the disk.
So, all you folks who have a shiny new I-Stick, treat it carefully and it'll stay good for a long time.
The only way the device itself transparently could encrypt/decrypt contents would be with some kind of password/key interface on the device itself. This would make the device somewhat biggish to support the PIN/password entry area. Also you'd have to add a few more chips to the device to support the cryptographic functions which could definitely change the footprint and power requirements... unless some chip vendor thinks it'd be neat to add those features to the next set of flashUSB single-chip solutions.
But if the protection is software based than you don't need to worry about tampering (since the data on the fob is useless otherwise). Existing chipsets would suffice.
Windows EFS is the answer, really. It uses 3DES or AES and it's easy to manage. You get it for free with 2000 and XP Pro... so... why not use it?
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Speak for yourself. Belkin's building adware into their routers' firmware is far worse than the technical shortcomings Iomega has had in the past.
I have a 1GB Iomega flash drive (not the micro) and am pretty satisfied with it. It's got a lifetime warranty and any data that exists on it also exists on my laptop, so hardware failure isn't that big a problem for me. It's pretty unlikely anyway, as these things don't have any moving parts, so there's no chance of "click of death"-type problems.
I like my women like my coffee... pale and bitter.
I work as a technician in a small computer shop and we've had a number of customers who've had problems with the drives, simply because they don't know they need to tell Windows to stop the device before pulling it out, which often destroys the formatting.
In either case, the device would have to be aware of the data contained within to know whether or not to accept/deny a request.
Equipped with said smarts, a USB-based device could "correctly" respond to anything asked of it by the host controller, but only returning 0s or garbage if it wants to not share some specific data.
The type of connection between the host and device is immaterial.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Verbatim Store 'n' Go,
sucks so bad that it should be called the
Verbatim Whore 'n' Blow
It's not that the app is written crappily.
Understand that when you mark a message as junk mail, you have to update the database which stores the word occurence frequencies for spam and ham. If a message contains 1000 unique tokens (including server names, non-standard headers), then you're going to need to potentially update the database file in 1000 different places.
Presumably this database file is memory mapped, so really it's up to the OS to cache and batch up these frequent writes.
What's really needed is a way to mark a file with a special attribute that says: this file gets updated a lot, don't flush the buffer cache so damn often.
A way to do that could solve a lot of problems that many different applications have when doing stuff to a file on flash media.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I work in a large building where practically every PC is on the corporate LAN, but we use USB flash drives all the time. Why? Because it's quicker and cleaner to plug in the drive I carry around, than to establish a network connection back to my office PC. No need to search the domains (yeah, it's an XP network), enter my user name and password (you have heard of security, right?), and browse to a folder where I might want to dump the file. Then when I get back to my desk, I have to remember exactly where that was in all my folders.
Even ignoring all the security/browsing/storing tedium, writing data to a USB 2.0 drive is simply faster than sending it over the network.
And every now and then, you hit a machine that either isn't on the network, or for who-knows-what stupid Windows reason, won't let you connect back to your own PC.
USB drives have been one of the biggest productivity enhancers to hit our office. Needless to say (I will anyway), they've also made floppies extinct.
RETURN without GOSUB in line 1050
PQI do a "Cool Drive" that has a write protect switch and is bootable. I know because I had one.
On the other hand, their products work great as entropy sources for hardware PRNG acceleration.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I sometime ago bought a SanDisk Cruzer mini, which has served me quite well. It's performance has been great and I have has no trouble with it what so ever. I carry it everywhere I go and can attest to the fact that it is quite durable. So durable in fact I had oneday forgot to check my pockets before I washed my clothes and it had went through the wash and dry cycles before I noticed the next day when I went to put on a pair of pants that I had just washed, that I had found my missing USB drive. I pluged it back and all the data on it was still there and it still works fine
If only MS could make products this realiable
Sure, it worked great for me until I got this in my data stream:
YOu dont get it!
You have to count the spaces between the *CLICKS* to get your data! It was an innovative way of hiding data in plain sight!
Looks to me they were testing benchmarks on FS speeds on a medium (which happens to be flash).
I wounder what would happen if you were to actually write sequential raw data to these devices? Would'nt that give no FS skew?
And talking about FAT (file acclocation table- MS partition formats), wasnt it recently said that it is a killer of Flash memory due to continously poking the same parts of data (the 2 tables)? If anything, Id consider NOT using fat if you can avoid it, due to that fact. Perhaps a freer FS would be advised (like ISO9660? )
Hint: it has something to do with their size...
Here's an image
Not only is the device approximately the size of a thumb, but the next time you insert it into the USB port, look carefuly at your hand. What part of you hand is the most prominently used. (Don't answer this all of you poor victims of threshing machine accidents.) Some even have a kind of depression in them for a particular digit.
Incidentally, many "strange" phrases that the English believe to be American or sometimes Australian in origin, actually are British. It's just that we still use them, whereas they fell out of use in England itself. That's not true of them all of course, just some.
Now I'm going to get mean! I can't believe you actually couldn't figure this out, unless perhaps you're not a native speaker of either English or American ;). I'm reminded of the SNL sketch of "Celebrity Jeopardy", where Will Ferrel asks the Minnie Driver character, "Are you English, or retarded?"
Well my USB drive has been through the wash a couple times, and putting it my wallet wouldn't really help. You see, my wallet has made it through the wash a couple times on it's own. Once I forgot to take it out of my swimsuit pocket before jumping in the atlantic.
lol it was late. Understand now... that terminology is just not common here in the UK at all, I've heard them called many things but not a thumb drive!
And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour Isaiah 3:5
Very nice resource, I'm probably going to bookmark this. 3 Flash drives!
Get me free Opera! Just one click!
I really don't care about what the specs call for, I just want to be able to use my thumb drive without getting on hands and knees. Yes, the thumb drive uses something close to the 2.0 max. If Apple, the designers of their hardware, can't figure out a way to send more power to their keyboard to allow for such devices, then it seems like they've got a lot of talent for nothing.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
Or if you put your thumb drive in the wash. Mine quite working after the second time in the wash. Ironicaly I think it was the drier that did it in.