Hi-speed USB2 Flash Drive Round-Up 264
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!"
Which is which? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Putting USB flash drives... (Score:5, Interesting)
Striping floppies to get better speed and storage...
Re:Durability/Reliability (Score:5, Interesting)
The case has a vent in it, so water definitely passed through it.
OS X Raid Array (Score:4, Interesting)
MRAM (Score:5, Interesting)
If you haven't heard of MRAM, that's definitely another technology to be on the lookout for. According to IBM and Infineon Technologies, it's supposed to start shipping this year.
Basically, it has the density of DRAM, 15ns access time, and doesn't loses it's state even when powered down.
Google turns up some articles: here [techtarget.com], here [motorola.com], and here [internetnews.com].
Encryption with specification is pretty useless (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately, we were unable to ascertain the type and strength of encryption.
Apparently, even the product packaging neglects to mention it. Neither is it listed on SanDisk's website. It could be as simple as rot-13 or as complex as multiple cascading one-way secure pads with quantum elliptical entanglements. Do you dare probe further to figure out what it's doing? Certainly not; you could well violate the DMCA.
almost there (Score:5, Interesting)
Strapping 1GB around your neck (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/
Fuji flash drive (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm surprised the review didn't cover performance under GnuPG and PGP -- I keep my keyrings on it, as well as my Quicken backups. Plus tons of room left for mp3s to listen while at work. The SiSoft benchmarks are nice, but I'd like to know how slow/fast they are relative to an IDE drive.
Chip H.
Re:Durability/Reliability (Score:2, Interesting)
That was 9 months ago and it is still humming along nicely... gouges and all.
Can you dual boot a bootable USB drive? (Score:5, Interesting)
Does write protect work with Linux? (Score:5, Interesting)
I noticed that some of these flash drives have "write protect". However, I noticed that some manufacturers claim that Linux cannot use the write protect functionality:
" When you put the write-protect switch to "ON" position, you cannot write any file or data into the device. You still can view and read the files and data in the device. You can switch the "Write-Protect" switch even you do not disconnect the device. Due to Linux OS limitation, the write-protect switch will not work on-line."
Flash drive manual [panram.com.tw]
But I see in status messages when people plug in the flash drives that it says "write protect is off".
Does anyone have experience with these products in Linux and whether write protect works with the flash drive connected?
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Win95 (Score:3, Interesting)
Style.. (slightly OT) (Score:2, Interesting)
I actually got in to discussion today about people wearing usb sticks in a neck strap.
Seems like there would be a considerable market niche for stylish sticks. None of the drives I've seen look ugly but it would be nice to see some real variety. Something little bit more unique.
So does anyone make something "special"..?
Re:pqi (Score:3, Interesting)
The one problem I've found is that they can be kind of difficult to carry around safely - you'd think that the small size would be an advantage, but without any good way to put them on a keychain it's really not. And they're sufficiently thin (and the plastic casing sufficiently weak) that I'd be a little worried about carrying them around without a sturdy plastic case, which sort of defeats the whole purpose of having a drive that small. Oh, and they're very very easy to lose.
Still, if you're willing to treat them like you'd treat SD cards or other such devices, they can be a great way to carry around a lot of data in a really tiny package. It's just that for everyday tasks of backing up and shuttling data around you might be better off with something larger and more durable.
Re:Strapping 1GB around your neck (Score:2, Interesting)
Knoppix media alternative? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:MRAM (Score:2, Interesting)
MRAM stands for magnetic RAM, so it takes no energy whatsoever to keep it's state. It only needs energy to read and write, and even if this is happening at an astoundingly high 5% duty-cycle, it's still only a fraction of the energy required to run other forms of RAM.
MRAM is very good for things like cell phones and handhelds.
The article misses a key point - real size (Score:4, Interesting)
You would think that if it's a 256meg drive then you would know the size, 256 megs, right? But marketing has struck again, I've found that 32 meg drivs I have actually seem to have about 30 megs of space on them, and vary by drive. A 64 meg device is also short several megs (as are some flash cards I have). I would have found it really handy if the reviewer had bothered to tell us how much space each of these devices really delivers.
Re:Putting USB flash drives... (Score:3, Interesting)
I've done this sort of thing with CD-Rs..
CD-ROM RAID Howto [thebucket.org]