Hi-speed USB2 Flash Drive Round-Up

An anonymous reader writes "Ars Technica has a USB 2.0 Flash drive review featuring 8 drives from different manufacturers. What's so interesting about the review is that not all Flash drives are created equal. Some have very unique features while some are clearly better than others. They also took a detailed look inside one of the drives as well as put two drives in a RAID-0 array (a la Mac OS X). Now that's cool!"

Putting USB flash drives...

[technogeeky]

in a raid array has to be the geekiest thing I've ever heard of. What is this world coming to?

I flashed my USB once...

[Anonymous Coward]

...damned schoolgirl called the cops. Who knew she could see it?

On the playground?

In a raincoat?

I'm just saying...

Re:Putting USB flash drives...

[Kenja]

I think the array of ZIP disks I built way back when was geeker.

Re:Putting USB flash drives...

[ilikejam]

So the 'R' is redundant then?

Thou Shalt Not Use GIF for Screenshots!

[green pizza]

Thou Shalt Not Use GIF for Screenshots!

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/004/flash/RAID0.gif [arstechnica.com]

GIF really makes that screenshot look bad. The gradent in the window bar was reduced to just two colors and the icons and RAID tab are a dithered mess.

Re:Durability/Reliability

[Anonymous Coward]

That's to be expected, after all, to raid other villages by sea you have to be pretty durable. Still, I'm impressed you were able to cram him into the washer and dryer.

Despite appearances, I am not a shill.

[GMFTatsujin]

But I'm wondering if they reviewed anything that was inside of this little beastie [thinkgeek.com].

And if what some of the above posters have put up about washer/dryer incidents is true, you can STILL take it into the bath with you!

Re:RAID Array? Afraid not...

[Feynman]

This seems to show some of the microsoft influence, where every storage medium plugged into the PC is defined as a disk drive.

. . . as opposed to the UNIX influence, where everything is defined as a file.

Re:Encryption with specification is pretty useless

[Fear the Clam]

I believe it's rot-26 encryption. I've heard that the next model will support rot-52, but they're not for export.

Re:How about...

[Anonymous Coward]

SHHHHH! Don't say that.

Linux is good, Linux is great. We surrender our will, as of this date.

Linux is good, Linux is great. We surrender our will, as of this date.

Linux is good, Linux is great. We surrender our will, as of this date.

Re:Stop with the fucking Mac zeaotry

[Rick Zeman]

Okay, troll. I normally don't read down at these depths, but since I had mod points which I'm now not going to use in this thread...

Riddle me this, asswipe. I have a hard drive in a computer. Let's say it's running Linux. Let's say I get another hard drive and I want to make it RAID 1 (mirrored) with the first drive. It's a 30 second operation in OS X, a 30 second operation in NT, a 60 second option in Win2k (gotta make it dynamic first).

How long will this operation take in Linux? Yes, you can use all three mouse buttons, and no, I don't have a backup....

Re:Durability/Reliability

[Anonymous Coward]

Happened to me before. I had my slashdot cookie with my name and password stored on it..

Re:Putting USB flash drives...

[Pieroxy]

Or simply TWNETOFABOFDIARA. The Worst Name Ever Tought Of For A Bunch Of F**g Drives In A Raid Array.

Jaz Raid!

[Foxxz]

I built a RAID5 array from jaz drives! It was the only way to get ANY reliability out of them! :D

-Foxxz

Re:Durability/Reliability

[sharkey]

Of course you can fit a Viking into the dryer. Check out how looks when you take him out. [startribune.com]

Suggested new USB speed names.

[Nick Driver]

Full speed, was the "full speed" of the older spec, but now we have hi-speed thanks to the 2.0 spec. So for USB 3.0 we'll have "super speed" (or whatever they call it

Personally, I think they should all be renamed to the following:

• Double Speed
• Multi Speed
• Mega Speed
• Ultra Speed
• Monster Speed
• Lu-Lu-Lu-Ludicrous Speed, and finally...
• HOLY SH*T SPEED