USB Flash Drive Round-up 348
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!"
iPod shuffle ... (Score:1, Informative)
Just wondering ...
bootable (Score:5, Informative)
my experience with Apacer (Score:5, Informative)
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
Re:iPod shuffle ... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Most people? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What we need is one universal standard (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:iPod shuffle ... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:New Removable Media Standard Ignores Media (Score:5, Informative)
Remember, USB only works where there's a host controller. That host has to be trusted. If it's not, your data is screwed.
A Firewire (IEEE-1394) keychain drive would be much more secure for what you're describing, since the keychain drive would be in a point-to-point communication mode with that untrusted store machine. It wouldn't rely on an untrusted host that might force it to do what you didn't ask it to do. I'm surprised nobody's made a Firewire keychain drive already. It would be a faster and more secure (though a bit less universal) alternative to USB-based drives.
Re:Whitelist (Score:4, Informative)
The game in question is In The Groove [roxorgames.com]. The USB device whitelist is here [groovegame.com].
Re: USB drive that accepts xD memory? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:faulty reasoning (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Most people? (Score:5, Informative)
For the curious, dialling *#06# on most phones will show you the IMEI of the handset.
Re:Most people? (Score:4, Informative)
Great, but that doesn't have any bearing on the statement that "most" people have them. How many people carried around floppies? If everyone with a floppy or CD on them right now was counted with all the people with flash drives, it still wouldn't be half the US.
Now, if someone were to say that half of all people with USB-capable computers had external USB storage, then that would be believable, even if it wasn't true yet. But half of all people? That just absurd.
Re:write protection switch (Score:4, Informative)
So my usb keyring is write protected most of the time.
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What's with OS X? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:New Removable Media Standard Ignores Media (Score:2, Informative)
Having worked with USB Mass Storage Class (MSC) devices, I will have to call you on your bullshit.
MSC devices utilise a SCSI pass-through protocol, which encapsulates SCSI packets in USB bulk commands. In order to access the flash, the device has to report the storage unit as a LUN, and respond to standard SCSI capacity inquiries.
Now, the firmware on the uController is at complete liberty to report whatever information it deems necessary to the requesting host. The host cannot arbitrarily "dump the memory" contents of the flash chip, as it is limited the number of sectors that the F/W reports. Attempts to access beyond the reported sector boundary will result in errors.
Additionally, in many of the top-end removable media devices, the F/W possesses the capability of representing the separate sections of the flash storage on the device as multiple LUNs, each with their own capacity (read: multiple partitions).
Add this functionality to a secure authentication system (password, fingerprint, etc.), and voila! The user has complete control over what can be accessed on the device by disabling, and effectively hiding, the partition on which they have data that they do not want to expose to the host.