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Blazing Dual Channel Thumb Drive
Anonomisk Howard writes "The speed results from Big Bruin's review of OCZ's latest flash drive have me lusting for a new thumb drive. From the review: 'The OCZ Rally drive is not a radical new design, it does not look significantly different than any other USB 2.0 drive on the market, but then you plug it in and begin to use it. This thing smokes! The transfer times shown in the charts are what this drive is all about. If you want the fastest, sleekest, and most extreme drive currently on the market, this is the one to get.'"
If only my wife were this interested in speed.
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
... lusting for a new thumb drive ...
:P
Ok, someone has a problem.
"This thing smokes!"
Isn't that the reason people stopped using those xbox cables?
Why do they make these usb key drives so friggin' big? THe electronics inside is probably like 1cm square.
Whats with all the redundant plastic?
I love my thumb drives, but trying to do "disk" intensive work like BIG spreadsheets can be a bit pokie. It looks like this is just what the Dr Ordered!
"Murderer? Well, that's a harsh word. I prefer to think of myself as a Mortality Technician."
How much do advertisements like this cost? Sure could use some publicity like this for my business. That summary sounds like it was pasted from some webstore. The most extreme thumbdrive? Please.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
lusting after "sleek extreme thumb drives" and "drooling over transfer speeds" speaks of serious lack of girlfriendage...
Isn't the point of USB keys to make it easy to exchange files with other people? unless you're in a real hurry (like, say, you want to give photos to a friend, he's not home, you break in anyway, proceed to the computer, but your friend's rottweiler saw you and is coming at you) who really cares if it takes one more minute to transfer those files?
The only things important to me are data integrity (a non-issue with 99% of the drives, even the cheapest ones), and a housing solid enough to make the thing survive the odd collection of objects it live with in my bag. Most other people who use these drives don't want anything else from them either.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Actually, my boss is looking to get in more advertising for our company. Appearantly, he wants me to do the web ad stuff. Is it actually possible to sponsor an article on /. or do we have to use the banners?
I figured you were being sarcastic, but honestly I've seen so many 'articles' on this site, that maybe you were being serious.
-Valiss
The review makes a big deal of the casing being made of aluminum, not plastic, and the unit having some heft to it (making it feel more solid).
I don't know why this is an advantage, however, other than cosmetically. Aluminum cases are a tiny bit more mechanically stable than plastic, especially cheap plastics... but since I'm not hitting my flash drives with a hammer, it doesn't matter to me. Proper design would prevent flexion from being a problem too, if I accidentally left it in my back pocket and sat down or something.
I'm also guessing that manufacturing costs for aluminum are less, not sure about materials cost.
Anyone out there who could shed some insight into why aluminum is preferred over well-designed plastic?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I think it's really stretching things to refer to anything that writes at 17MB/sec as having "blazing speed". Sure it's faster than most thumb drives but that's like bragging about being the world's tallest midget.
"Sleekest," though? It looks like every other usb flash drive. Maybe if they mounted a spoiler on it, or added some racing stripes. Or speed holes. Speed holes make everything sleeker.
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
... the next time I bypass the alarm systems, break into someone's office, hack into their PC (which is running a previously unseen user interface which is some bastard child of XP and OS/2 Warp), and begin copying their hard drive to my uber-leet turbo thumb-drive.
Every time I have done this before, they have come back with about 30 seconds left to finish, leaving me with little option but to hide in the filing cabinet.
James Bond
(Has anyone else noticed that the time remaining in films is always accurate, and doesn't jump around like the real life ones?)
If you google around you'll find this thing really is freaking fast . This isn't just an ad, it is the fastest flash drive around. And you can get them for $25 + S/H . I've got one and I must say, they are solid (metal casing) and noticably faster than any other flash drive I've used.
... when you consider this guy :)
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
1) reasonably fast
2) faster than this
3) very fast (compared to this)
4) slower than this
5) faster than this, but slower than 3. also, not quite the theoretical limit of 2.
Hope these answers help!
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
AnandTech has a more comprehensive review of many flash drives, and the OCZ is far from being the fastest.
4 9
Although it could be considered the cheapest fast drive in a way...
http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=25
Why not take this further? If you can write data twice as fast by simultaneously writing to two internal flash chips, why not use 4? or 8? Hell, then you can even internally RAID 5 'em!
And don't even start with the "What, aren't flash drives fast enough already!?" line. My company was tasked with setting up a accounting firm to cheaply work from home, via USB thumb drives. Copying 3 meg spread across a few thousand small files took something on the order of 15 minutes. It's pretty hard to get people to synch nightly on their way out the door with times like that.
Crow T. Trollbot