Flash Drives Go To Work

feminazi writes "USB drive capacity is outpacing Moore's Law by doubling every year, evolving from tchotchkes to devices capable of addressing corporate needs ranging from mobile computing platforms to files stores with encryption and biometrics protection. SanDisk and M-Systems Flash Disk Pioneers launched a thumb drive with an intelligent U3 chip that can store and launch applications. Lexar's premium JumpDrive Lightning thumb drive has the fastest data-transfer rates at 18MB/sec write and 24MB/sec read. And some are strong on the outside, too. SanDisk touts a drive built to withstand 2,000 lbs. of pressure. Computerworld tested that claim by repeatedly driving a Volkswagen Beetle over the ruggedized thumb drive. While the drive's body came away with a few scratches, there were no dents, and not a single lost file."

Comments

Comdex 2000

[boristdog]

When I first saw these at Comdex 2000, I thought "These things will replace all removable media someday."

Looks like they'll do even more.

Re:Why so much of USB?

[FlipmodePlaya]

USB = UNIVERSAL Serial Bus

Point is, just about every remotely modern laptop and desktop in the world has USB ports, a redesign or different format without backwards compatability would defeat the purpose of it.

2000 lbs of pressure?

[AaronPSU777]

Nitpicky I know, but pounds is not a unit of pressure. What you probably meant is pound-force.

I hated the U3 Cruzer until I got rid of the U3.

[Kyeo]

A thumbdrive is nice, but the U3 software is one of the most godawful things in existence, and not uninstallable without an internal Best Buy program until recently. Ick.

Yes

[arrrrg]

Moore's law is often stated regarding the decreasing cost of a single transistor, or (equivalently) about the number of transistors per device of a given cost. Since flash RAM is constructed using a particular form of transistors (with an additional isolated gate that will hold a charge or lack thereof), Moore's law seems to (roughly) apply. In any case, flash is much closer to an ordinary IC than a hard drive.

Re:PSI, pounds, etc.

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

2,000 lbs is not a pressure; there's no area. It's weight.

No it's not. It's a unit of mass. If you want a unit of weight I suggest the pound-force.

Encryption?

[rrohbeck]

Yup, a truck full of tapes (or disks, it you have *good* packaging) is still the standard way of doing high volume data vaulting. If you need to move multiple TB per day (nothing special for a large datacenter), you don't want to pay for that amount of bandwidth unless you absolutely have to, i.e. you need online access.

That's why tapes keep falling off the back of a truck and get lost every now and then. Bummer if there's credit card records on those tapes. That's why hardware encryption is getting a lot of attention recently.

TFA mentions encryption is passing; are there any standard USB drives with encryption yet? How is the password transmitted to the drive? I sometimes have a bad feeling carrying company data and sources around all the time. I keep the USB stick attached to the company badge so I won't lose is easily, but still...

Re:Encryption?

[cb0nd]

I think that truecrypt does a very good job at this.

I haven't used it all that much (ya know, while thumbdrives are easy to lose, I don't really care if someone sees how bad my assignments for the Operating Systems class really are), but I think it does a pretty decent job even in different environments.

Re:God, I hate that U3 chip.

[DAldredge]

Why doesn't your product work under Linux or OSX? By work I mean support all features supported on XP.