by FastSite
01/28/2003 | 12:00 AM
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.<%BANNER[article]%>
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:
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.
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 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 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.
Those who value good and fast memory for PC should know TwinMOS name. Yeah, this company was one of the first to start mass production of DDR400 modules, but today we are more interested in TwinMOS' achievements in the flash drive area. The storage capacities of Mobile Disk devices can vary from 32MB to 768MB. The company also offers some pretty unusual 384MB storage media, but we tested a 256MB model.
TwinMOS Mobile Disk comes in a nice transparent plastic box. The box also includes a USB extension cable, a string to wear the drive around your neck, a CD with drivers and utilities, and a one-page manual.
Mobile Disk is the biggest among all models we covered in our today's roundup. Its length is 93mm, width - 24mm, depth - 12mm. The weight of the device is 20gram.
If TwinMOS engineers had wanted to make the Mobile Disk a little smaller, they could have done it without any problems. At least 10mm of length could have been easily removed. The point is that there is a LED inside the butt end of the device. When the Mobile Disk is connected to the PC, this LED is constantly blinking. It's blinking somewhat more often when the drive is accessed. Actually, this blinking is an annoying thing as sometimes it seems that the system is working with the drive, although it is not true.
As for ergonomics, we find Mobile Disk not very convenient to use from our personal experience. Of course it is good that it has a clip to wear it in a pocket like a pen. But the ear to put the string into is aside, so it will hang askew around the neck. Not very handsome-looking, you see. It's also too long to put it into the lighter pocket of your jeans. The read-only switch is placed aside and can be turned on and off only with some very thin thing.
Despite all this criticism, we discovered almost no problems concerning the easy connection to the PC. This drive fits in between the occupied PS/2 and COM ports, but if the next USB port has something in it, the flash drive will be plugged in at an angle and get pressed against the neighboring USB device.
TwinMOS Mobile Disk has a smart security system. You can install a special program from the enclosed CD, its icon will then appear in the system tray. The program can divide the disk into two zones. One is for common use, and the other is secret and for authorized access only. The user chooses the size of each zone.
After this manipulation, the public zone will only be available. In order to access the security zone, you will need to enter the password. Here you have even got the opportunity to enter a hint in case you forget the password.
After you enter the password, the two zones interchange their roles and now you can only access the security one. After the flash drive is disconnected from the PC, or the user chooses the "Log Out" option from the security program's menu, the zones swap once again and the public zone only will become active. The software bundle also includes a low-level formatting utility. It can merge together the two zones even if the user forgot the password. In this case, the drive will still be ready to work, but the info from the security zone will be lost.
Actually, we couldn't find out who is producing USByte drives. It is a pity as this product is rather interesting and differs a lot from the others we reviewed here.
USByte comes in a small paper box. It's accompanied by a USB extension cable, a user's manual, a 3" CD with drivers and a neck-string. Note that the drivers come on a small, 3" CD, not a usual 5" one.
USByte flash drive is the smallest in our review. With the cap on, its dimensions are 75x23x10mm. The weight of the device isn't marked in the specifications, but we can say that it's about 15gram.
USByte is the only drive in our roundup to boast a metal case. It's made of two layers: the plastic case covered with a metal shell. The cap is also metal-made. The documentation doesn't say what metal is used, but we guess it's aluminum.
This drive has no clip, only a small crossbar in its butt end to put the neck-string in. The ledges on the front panel of the drive help to hold it firmly. Beneath the "USByte" label, there is a hole in the case through which you can see the LED. It's glowing red all the time when the drive is connected to the PC.
The read-only switch is placed at the back of the device, in a groove. It can only be turned on or off with some thin tool: a small screwdriver or a needle.
The smallest flash drive among our today's testing participants quite naturally has no problems plugging into the USB port. If PS/2, COM and the next USB ports are all occupied, it still gets easily plugged, just like the EasyDisk.
USByte can protect the stored information from third parties, but the protection system is not user-friendly. Seems like USByte manufacturer went too far in building up the secure system and made it too complicated for the end-user. First of all, USByte is the only drive of the five reviewed, which requires installing drivers even for WindowsXP. To be exact, it requires not drivers, but the security software. During the first use, it will ask you for the drivers CD and will install a special utility. This utility will ask for password whenever you connect the drive to the PC. That is, if you want to connect the flash drive to a PC it hasn't been connected to before, you will need a CD with drivers besides the drive itself. Of course, the 3" CD is small and can even be carried in the same pocket with the USByte, but we thinks it's a poor implementation of data protection. Especially, if we compare it to what the EasyDisk has.
After the installation, USByte will ask for the password. By default, we have "1234" password, which you'd better change for something less evident. The system recognizes the drive as two devices: two drives. One of them has 1MB capacity, the other: all the remaining 255MB. At first, this division may seem confusing, but you will get the point later. For people who don't want to keep much of their info secret, the USByte will prove unhandy as it always asks for the password, even when there is no password specified. We also have some serious doubts about the efficiency of the security system, but as we are not into hacking that much, let's not dwell upon it now :).
USByte cannot be used for booting up the system. And in general, it makes an impression of an under-developed product, but it is solely our subjective opinion.
Well now, it's time to throw all the reviewed USB flash drives into one heap. First of all, we offer a table listing all the main specs of the reviewed drives.
The only subjective parameter, the easiness of connection to the PC was determined according to our own scale. As we have already mentioned in this article, we took a mainboard with two USB ports situated between the PS/2 and COM ports. One USB port was occupied by a standard cable, thus emulating some USB device (there are a lot of them in the market now). The keyboard and mouse were plugged into the PS/2 ports, the upper COM port was also occupied. Here is the detailed description of the evaluation scale we used:
| USB Flash Drive Model Name | Dimensions, mm | Weight, g | Password data protection | Boot-up disk function | Connection comfort, points | Price, USD |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apacer HandyDrive | 85x28x15 | 17 | No | No | 2 | $92 |
| EasyDisk | 87x24x10 | 15 | Yes | Yes | 5 | $104 |
| Transcend JetFlash | 87x30x14 | 24 | Yes | Yes | 4 | $132 |
| TwinMOS Mobile Disk | 93x24x12 | 20 | Yes | Yes | 4 | $84 |
| USByte | 75x23x10 | ~15 (?) | Yes | No | 5 | $88 |
We have already paid a lot of attention to the external highs and lows of each drive, now let's estimate their speed characteristics.
Most manufacturers specify the nominal read and write speeds of their flash drives. Sometimes the numbers are true, in some cases they are greatly overstated. When buying a small-capacity (16MB-31MB) USB drive, its speed may be of little importance. But when we talk about devices that can store a couple of hundreds of megabytes, their performance is worth mentioning.
Testbed configuration looks as follows:
The mainboard is equipped with an integrated USB 2.0 VIA VT6202 controller. We used the 480Mbit/sec USB 2.0 interface. It's backward-compatible with the USB 1.1, so we had no problems connecting the flash drives to a faster USB 2.0 port.
Write caching onto mobile devices was turned off in WindowsXP (it's done by checking "Optimize for Quick Removal" option in drive's properties). This way the obtained results are "pure".
We used the following software sets:
During the tests, we wanted to answer two questions. Here they are:
Now comes the first part of our benchmarking session: performance comparison of the reviewed USB flash drives.
Curiously enough, the access time may vary dramatically by different flash drive models: up to 10 times! Also as you can see, the CPU workload depends a lot on the controller used in the drive. Overall, USByte is unrivalled in WinBench99 and HandyDrive is the second fastest. EasyDisk is worst of all and takes the last but one place in all the tests (its "competitor" - Mobile Disk - was at least the best in the CPU utilization test). Now, let's go over to the more synthetic Sandra 2002 Pro.
The last diagram sums up the results in Sandra 2002 test set. No need to comment. We would only like to note that Mobile Disk is the first in all Sandra 2002 tests, unlike WinBench 99, where it showed very low read speed.
After that, we decided to check the drives' performance in real tasks, like reading and writing data via the operation system.
During the first part of the test a folder containing 1482 files with the total size of 241MB was copied from the HDD to the USB flash drive. Then the OS was re-booted and the folder was copied back from the flash drive onto the HDD. The copy speeds were written down as read and write speeds of the flash drive respectively. As the HDD speed is much higher than that of a flash drive, it didn't affect the results. So, they do reflect the performance of the flash drives as is.
The second part of the test was the same as the first one, with that only difference that we copied one 241MB file instead of a number of small files.
As we see, Mobile Disk from TwinMOS is the best in real-life tasks, with Apacer HandyDrive is close behind. The remaining drives proved considerably slower than the leaders.
Now, let's check the dependence of the flash drive performance on its storage capacity. We took EasyDisk models of 256, 128 and 64MB storage capacity. All the drives processed the same 60MB file. Just like in the previous test, the file was copied in Windows XP Explorer from the HDD to the flash drive and back again.
The little difference in write time can be considered a measurement error. So, we see that unlike hard disk drives, the performance of flash drives doesn't depend on their storage capacity and is only determined by the flash memory used.
USB flash drives have evident advantages over many other storage media, especially over the out-dated 1.44MB diskettes. Higher capacity, smaller dimensions, high reliability, and noiselessness - these are their strong points among others. As for drawbacks, they are very few and only crop up when we compare USB flash drives with IDE HDDs, CD-RW drives, magneto-optic data media and the like.
Among the flash drives we have reviewed today, EasyDisk seems most easy-to-use. It connects to the PC without any problems, features a good data security system and small dimensions. It also can serve as a boot-up disk. But its average performance doesn't allow calling it the ideal drive.
As for the least successful one today, it's unfortunately, Apacer HandyDrive. Although it did well in WinBench99, it is not very convenient to connect to the PC, has no data security system and cannot be used for system booting. However, we don't want to call it a bad solution as well, because its high file copy speed in Windows deserves all the best.
To tell the truth, we were a bit disappointed with the most expensive Transcend JetFlash drive. It appeared a rather average product. The drive performed not fast enough and proved not really convenient to use. We would say that it is not worth the money it sells at.
The main drawback of USByte is the necessity to carry the drivers CD (even a 3" one) together with the drive to be able to use it with other computers.
As for TwinMOS Mobile Disk, its design is its weakest spot. It is not a thing to wear around your neck. It does best in Sandra 2002 Pro and during file copying in Windows, but it proves rather average in WinBench99.
To wind up our today's roundup, we would like to say that it is not really important what flash drive is the best now. The main thing is the upcoming trend towards the use of these devices. We guess this trend is quite evident.