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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!"
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. (> <)
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.
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
I use the iRiver with the Korean UMS firmware upgrade you insensitive clod!
And I'm not an old person in Korea.
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.
They excluded all mp3 players from the review.
If they added mp3 players, the review would have grown from 12 devices to 30.
However, if I had a choice between a 512MB Flash Drive for $60, and a 512MB Flash Drive/mp3 player for $99, I would definately consider the latter.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
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
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 think the only thing good for someone who did that would be a first aid kit...
-SJ53
It might take 10 days to make its first appearance on slash, but you can be sure it will be back tomorrow.
liqbase
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.
If you look online you can find a decent 128mb USB drive for $13, and a good 256mb for just over $20.
Also, are you serious about the floppy drive? Floppy drives are the slowest, most unreliable and generally worst form of storage I have ever used. In the late 90's there were numerous different replacements for the floppy, like Zips, Superdisks (something like that) etc. None of these caught on because nobody had a drive to read it. Now we have a system where 99.5% of all users can read your files from a USB key at far faster speeds than a floppy could offer, but you want to go back to an 11.52mb floppy drive?
Some USB drives are flimsy, yes, but I remember putting floppy disks in my backpack, and almost every time the damn metal thingy would bend or get yanked off. I feel far more confident about tossing a solid state USB key into a backpack, pocket, cupholder, etc.
-Ted http://www.freemathhelp.com/
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.
Why is it that none of them have write-protect AND are bootable? Both of those are pretty high features on any geek list.
In order to find out WTF you were talking about, I googled your text... and got zilch. So what did you mean? And how can you identify a USB device in a video game... and why would they do this?
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Firstly, I have not seen a single new computer in the last year or two without front USB Ports. Also, a USB Hub or a USB extension cable works wonders.
Secondly, the last thing I'd call one of these devices is expensive. I recall it was about 2 years ago when I bought a 256MB SD Card (cheap one) for $139 canadian which was around $100 US back then. Today you can get a 1GB one for $100 US that is of decent quality and a top of the line 1GB for 100$ US.
Now, you may be saying WTF, that is expensive! you must be rich. Well, no, I just have an appreciation for the difference between solid state and magnetic or optical storage. Even compared to todays leading comparable storage medium, CD-RWs, they are A) Much faster, B) No software required, C) Virtually indestructable if retardedness is not an issue.
Finally, I have a Pentium 2 333mhz computer that has USB ports. I think it's safe to say that USB is a standard. As for drivers, if you still run windows 98, using good 'ol floppy drives may not be a bad idea. But if you want to embrace USB mass storage and don't want to upgrade your OS, included win98 drivers will do the trick, but are slightly slow to begin access to the device.
I must say that having had an M-System DiskOnKey 64MB for the last few years, I have had NOT ONE issue with corrupted files, durability, or speed, even on a win98 system. I can however think of numerous times where having to read/write many times to a floppy has yielded in extremly slow speeds and how easily it is to break them.
To top it off, a 11.52 MB floppy disk? Why not just write the 0s and 1s down on a piece of paper, it shouldn't be much slower.
Long live USB Mass Storage Devices! I say this as I am about to head out to buy a verbatim store and go pro 512MB and from my computer which does not have a floppy drive.
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
1GB iPod Shuffle: $149
The prices of the reviewed drives (according to the comparison matrix at the end of the article) are $77, $120, $116, $138, $86, $127, $108, $80, and $80 for each of the 1GB models. Not only is EVERY drive reviewed cheaper than a 1GB iPod Shuffle, but 4 of the 1GB drives are cheaper than the 512MB iPod Shuffle. Don't get me wrong, I love my iPod Shuffle, but it is NOT cheaper than these drives.
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.
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
Luddite.
The game in question is In The Groove. The USB device whitelist is here.
Man, what planet have you been living on? Have you tried using floppy discs lately?
Floppy discs have never given you 100% certainty and these days it's probably more like 20%. I practically never use them and when I do it becomes a long and tedious search to find a disc and drive that actually work. The drives are little more than a token gesture on modern PCs and they're fast disappearing.
A new standard for floppies would offer none of the benefits which you claim. No existing drive would read them. No existing media would give you this mythical new capacity. It would just be a completely new and incompatible option. It would also be far less convenient to carry around than the modern alternatives.
Accept it - the floppy is dead. It was useful in its day but it's long since been superseded. The alternatives are just too overwhelmingly better.
John
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.
I fail to see how one game became "some of the newer arcade video games."
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.
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
Yeah, but you ought to be able to save your high score and position in an arcadde game on a flash drive.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
A USB drive with removable media makes good sense if you have other devices that take that kind of media. You can then use them for usb storage, or use the thing as a card reader.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Seeing as I was the one who wrote the review, I seriously considered including the Shuffle, but then I realized that if I included it, I would have gotten a ton of people accusing me of playing favorites to Apple and asking where all the other Flash-based MP3 players were at the same time. Including all the flash-based players along with the Shuffle would have made this article obscenely long and unmanageable.
Needless to say, I have an iPod shuffle in hand along with a bunch of other flash-based digital audio players. I should have a review coming soon featuring as many of these flash-based players as I can get my hands on (some of which can act as a flash drive, too.)
Hope this makes sense.
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
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.