There are several reasons for flash drives as small as a lighter or trinket to grow in popularity. First of all, it is their constantly lowering price. Today it is possible to buy a 16MB flash drive for $20 or even less. Secondly, the popularity growth of flash storage media is connected with the spreading of the USB standard. All modern mainboards are equipped with USB ports, which are often placed at the front panel of the PC case, thus making it easy to connect any peripheral devices to the PC. And flash devices themselves are the third reason. They are light-weight, small-size, indifferent to magnetic fields, resistant against temperature drops and mechanical impacts (bumps, vibration and the like), and the removable storage media used in them are not subject to wearing out. Such a drive can literally keep the information for ages. So, it looks like there is no handier data storage medium now than a flash drive.

The application field of these devices is rather narrow. They serve to store information and transfer it between computers. Supporting USB interface, these drives can be easily connected to ordinary desktop PCs, servers, notebooks or Macintoshes. For computers with no FDD, the USB drive is one of the most optimal ways to transport the data to another computer (we don't take into account networking here). Of course, few people will boot Windows XP operation system from a USB drive, although some modern mainboards support this feature. The process will be long due to rather low USB port bandwidth (1.5MB/sec) and, moreover, the drive capacity should be enough to store the entire OS and its swap file. But it's quite possible to boot up DOS or Windows 95, watch movies or listen to music stored in such a device.

Storage capacities of flash drives are steadily growing, as well as the demand for them. It's quite natural as file sizes are growing, too. It's now usual to encode MP3 files with 192Kbit/sec or higher bit-rate rather than with 128Kbit/sec. Drivers for a graphics card may occupy over a dozen of megabytes. A snapshot taken with a 5megapixel camera may be in 2560x1920 resolution and several MB big. So, if you need to carry so much data in your shirt breast pocket, you will want a big-capacity flash drive. 64MB should be quite enough in most cases, but 256MB would be good, too. :)

Here are some of the indisputable advantages of USB flash drives over other storage media:

• Small dimensions and light weight;
• Storage capacity ranging from 16MB to 2GB;
• Noiseless work;
• No moving components;
• The drive is not subject to magnetic fields influence;
• Low power consumption;
• Resistance to hits, drops and vibrations;
• Can work in dusty environment;
• Is not subject to deterioration;
• Practically infinite number of re-write cycles;
• No drivers required for Windows ME, XP, 2000
• Some drives allow securing the stored information against unauthorized access.

As we see, the advantages are numerous. USB devices can be more convenient in some cases than CDs, 3" diskettes or even hard disk drives.

There is no problem finding a flash drive now. A number of manufacturers offer their flash devices differing in capacity from 16MB to 2GB. They are nearly identically targeted products, but differ in size, weight, user-friendliness and price. Today we will have a closer look at five 256MB USB flash drives from different manufacturers.

Testing Participants

Apacer HandyDrive

Apacer is a well-known PC memory maker company. It produces RAM modules for PCs, SO-DIMMs for notebooks and also flash cards of CompactFlash type. So, the production of USB flash drives is just one of the fields the company is active in. The HandyDrive series is quite popular now.

HandyDrive devices come in a green paper box that includes the flash-drive, a CD with drivers for Windows 95/98, a silver string to wear the drive on your neck, a user's manual and an extension cable with two USB ports. By the way, the HandyDrive box depicts a stand for the drive, a kind of docking station, that's connected to the USB port of the mainboard. If your PC doesn't have USB ports on the front panel, or it's hard to access them, you can place the stand on your desk, connect it to the mainboard and connect the drive to this stand afterwards.

But there are two package variants: with the docking station or with an ordinary USB cable. We got the second one.

The HandyDrive has a silver plastic case of a rounded shape. It's dimensions are 85x28x15mm, weight - 17 grams.

The USB connector of this drive is covered with a plastic cap. The HandyDrive has no clip to wear it like a pen. This is not a big disadvantage. You are just running no risk of losing the drive if the clip breaks up or the cap slides off.

In the upper part of the device, next to the "Apacer" label, there is a red LED signaling that the drive is at work. It lights up when the drive is accessed both for reading or writing. The hole at the end of the drive is for putting the neck string in and wearing the device around your neck. On the side of the HandyDrive, there is also a groove with a switch that sets the device into read-only mode. You can only move it by means of some thin thing, like a needle or a small screwdriver.

HandyDrive allows getting to its innards without any problems. There is only one little screw on the case. So, we can see what a flash drive looks like from inside by the example of this one.

We see a small PCB. One side of it carries the drive controller chip; two flash memory chips from Samsung are located on the other side. Depending on the storage capacity of the device, it may be equipped with different memory chips or they can even be installed on a daughter-card connected to the main PCB. As you see, everything is quite simple. This construction simplicity makes these devices really low-cost, so that the price of the flash drives only depends on the price of flash memory chips used.

Most small USB flash drives have the same problem: it's hard to connect them to the USB port if the neighboring ports are in use. The most common place for the drive to be connected to is the panel of the mainboard. We checked how easy it is to connect each of the reviewed drives to the computer. The PC configuration was quite common: it had only two USB ports onboard and there were also the keyboard and mouse connected via PS/2 and a modem connected via the COM port.

In the worst case, when there is a VGA output of the integrated graphics core instead of one of the COM ports and there is no panel with the additional COM-port, you will have no choice for the COM-port modem. It is also possible that the second COM port is already occupied. In these both cases you will have to plug the USB drive in between the occupied COM and PS/2 ports.

The dimensions of the Apacer HandyDrive didn't allow this and we had to make free the upper COM connector. Moreover, if the next USB port is already occupied by a joystick or mouse, for instance, the HandyDrive won't plug in next to this device because of its excessive thickness. So there is only one way to avoid problems in this case: to use the extension cable.

Apacer offers no software to protect the HandyDrive against unauthorized access. There are no formatting utilities on the CD, as well. So, it is impossible to turn the HandyDrive into a boot-up device and use it instead of a system diskette.

Overall, the HandyDrive is an entry-level flash drive, without any pleasing extras.

EasyDisk

EasyDisk flash drive is manufactured by Chinese Shenzhen Luwen Electronics Company. To tell the truth, I have nevr heard about this company before, but this fact surely cannot prevent the product from participating in our roundup.

EasyDisk comes in a small box alongside with a USB extension cable, a CD with drivers for Windows 98/SE, a blue string to wear the drive, a user's manual and a warranty coupon, which thanks the user for buying the EasyDisk and promises one-year manufacturer's warranty.

EasyDisk is rather flat in its shape. It's dark-gray and wears a silver cap. With the cap on, the dimensions of the device are 87x24x10mm. Its weight is 15gram.

This flash drive model has a rather handy shape. On the one hand, the drive is thin, on the other - the cap of the drive has a clip so you can wear it just like a pen, in a breast pocket. Let's note, though, that the cap sits not very tightly, so there is some chance of its sliding off and the drive's dropping down, so that you might lose all the information. There is a read-only mode switch on one side of the drive. On the upper back part of the drive, there is a red LED signaling when the device is connected to the PC. It's blinking when the drive is accessed and glows steadily when the drive is idle. The hole for the neck string is available next to the LED.

Thanks to its small dimensions, the EasyDisk can be plugged into the USB port in the hardest situation: not only when the keyboard, mouse and modem are in the PS/2 and COM ports, but also when the next port is taken by a joystick or some other USB device connected via a standard cable. This is a great advantage, as easy connection is sometimes even more important than easy carrying of the drive. And we have to stress that we cannot complain about any of these in case of EasyDisk.

EasyDisk also features the best, to our opinion, info security system. By default, the drive stores a small PassID utility running up when the drive is connected to the PC. So, you don't have to install any programs. After that, there appears an icon in the system tray next to the clock. You can click on it and lock the drive ("Lock Disk") by setting a password. After the password has been specified, the drive is protected against writing and reading and all the stored files will be invisible until the user runs PassID once again and enters the password. So, PassID provides excellent protection of the data on the flash device and allows locking it with a click of the mouse as well as unlocking it for access. You won't be worried about confidentiality of your info, if the drive is somehow lost. You should know, though, that the drive, even locked, can still be formatted. So, if you forgot the password, you can format and use the device, although the stored data will be lost in this case.

You can also make the EasyDrive a boot-up device and use it instead of a system diskette when necessary. There is a special utility on the CD included into the package that helps to format the drive, copy system files to it, set the password, and format it at low-level, just in case. Although not all modern mainboards support boot-up procedure from a USB drive, there is a definite trend towards support of this feature in the new products and it will certainly become popular very soon.

We revealed no problems with the EasyDrive at work. We won't say it is an ideal device, though, because we haven't yet seen the benchmarks results. For now, let's turn to the next device.

Transcend JetFlash

Transcend is quite well-known for its DIMM memory modules. So, no wonder that the big manufacturer of memory, flash cards and card readers is now entering the flash drive market. Transcend offers two flash drive models: USB Flash Drive of 16MB to 512MB capacities and JetFlash of 16MB to 1GB capacities. For our today's review, we took a JetFlash device. This drive comes in a small blue box with the drive capacity written in big numbers.

The package of Transcend JetFlash includes a USB cable that serves as an extension cable, a user's manual, a colorful booklet about Transcend products, a CD with drivers and utilities and multi-color stickers to mark the drive.

JetDrive devices may come in a small or big case. The smaller ones have storage capacity from 16 to 128MB, while the bigger ones - from 256MB to 1GB. The dimensions of our 256MB drive were 87x30x14mm, weight - 24gram. The smaller drives have 71x25x12mm dimensions and 15gram weight.

The case of the JetDrive is black and rounded. The USB connector is covered with a rather tight-sitting small black cap. At first, you will have to exert some effort putting it off, as it's too slippery. The JetFlash has no clip or hole for the neck-string. The light-emitting diode is placed inside the case here, next to the USB connector. It lights up red when the drive is accessed for reading or writing.

One of the sides of the drive is the place to put those stickers on. There was a time when we used to apply stickers to diskettes to know one of them from another. Now one 256MB flash drive can replace 177 diskettes and you will hardly want another drive like that. So, it's rather unclear why we need to put a sticker on it, especially as the size of the sticker (27x7mm) allows writing just one word on it. The read-only switch is located on the end of the JetFlash drive. This switch is as tight-sitting as the cap, so it's no easy task to switch it on or off. You can hardly do it with your finger, and with a screwdriver you can simply break it. We guess we can write it down as a disadvantage, really.

Notwithstanding its seeming awkwardness, the Transcend JetFlash can fit in between the occupied PS/2 and COM ports thanks to its narrowness in the USB connector area. This drive can even be plugged in if the next USB port is taken by some peripheral device. In this case, it will be pressed against the connector of the neighboring USB cable, though. In fact, we didn't expect such an easy connection, as the drive does look slightly big. But this is a really nice surprise.

The software that comes with the JetFlash is the same as that accompanying EasyDisk (see above for details). This drive can also be used as a system disk, and the stored information can be protected with a password, just like by EasyDisk.

In general, we found no serious disadvantages in the Transcend JetFlash. It's quite easy to use. We only wish it were somewhat shorter.