Reviews » Hardware » USB Thumbdrive

avatar

Corsair Flash Survivor GT

Posted 10/01/2007 at 11:48am | by Gordon Mah Ung

We’ve used too many Jack Bauer references lately, but c’mon, how could we review this key and not say it’s the one Jackie boy would use?

The 8GB Flash Survivor GT, after all, is shock and water resistant—and if your service automatic runs out of ammo, you can even fling its hard aluminum body at someone’s head. But how does it perform?

Click Read More for more. 

» Read More
avatar

Verbatim 12GB Store

Posted 06/12/2007 at 4:19pm | by Gordon Mah Ung

Team Flash can’t compete with Team Magnetic on desktop computers, but the flash guys may have finally found a competitor it can conquer.

Unfortunately for Verbatim, its new 12GB micro-drive USB thumb drive is the victim. The Store ’n’ Go USB HD Drive uses Cornice’s Dragon-2 12GB miniature hard drive. This sixth-gen drive features lower power consumption, a 40 percent smaller size, and a 300 percent capacity increase. It also features a motion sensor, so it won’t die if you drop it while it’s running.

Click Read More for more. 

» Read More
avatar

Patriot Xporter XT 4GB

Posted 02/13/2007 at 12:38pm | by Gordon Mah Ung

The Patriot Xporter XT offers the same capacity at less than half the price of Kingston’s drive (reviewed next). Unfortunately, that’s the only stand-out feature we could find.

Click Read More for more. 

» Read More
avatar

Kingston Datatraveler Secure 4GB

Posted 02/12/2007 at 12:38pm | by Gordon Mah Ung

Kingston’s DataTraveler Secure is billed as an “enterprise-grade” flash drive. Translated for civvies, that means 256-bit AES hardware encryption, an IPX8 waterproof rating, and a titanium shell. Oh yeah, and optimization for small files. While almost every key we’ve tested in the last few months choked on the 10,000 Word docs we feed them during testing, the DataTraveler Secure was able to write that onslaught of files in three minutes instead of the usual 20 minutes.

Click Read More for more. 

» Read More
avatar

Corsair Flash Voyager 8GB

Posted 02/09/2007 at 12:35pm | by Gordon Mah Ung

Corsair’s Flash Voyager isn’t the largest thumb drive around, but it sure is affordable, as well as speedy. In our tests, the Voyager ran away from all the others here in large-file transfers, and only Kingston’s drive could match it in medium-size JPG file copies.

Click Read More for more. 

» Read More
avatar

A-Data My Flash Fingerprint Disk 2GB

Posted 11/30/2006 at 5:16pm | by Josh Norem

The My Flash Fingerprint Disk offers a feature that goes well with a USB key: a fingerprint scanner to protect the drive’s contents. While not everyone keeps satellite images of nuclear facilities and top-secret documents on their USB key, it’s still reassuring to know that there’s an extra level of protection between your data and potential do-badders.

Click Read More for more. 

» Read More
avatar

GuardID ID Vault

Posted 11/29/2006 at 11:31am | by Gordon Mah Ung

Today’s simple username/password system is a single-factor authentication mechanism—your credentials are the only information necessary. When an evildoer has that information, whether it was stolen with a keylogger or a “phishing” email, you’re screwed.

Click Read More for more. 

» Read More
avatar

Crucial Gizmo OverDrive

Posted 09/17/2006 at 4:38pm | by Josh Norem

Crucial pulled out all the stops with its new Gizmo Overdrive key. This drive roars past everything but Corsair’s fastest offerings.

The Gizmo’s read speeds are more than twice as fast as OCZ's Mini-Kart and Kingston's DataTraveler, and its write speeds are 30 percent faster. This kind of performance has a price, however, as the Gizmo is twice as expensive per gig as these other two.

Click Read More for more. 

» Read More
avatar

Western Digital Passport Pocket 6GB

Posted 08/16/2006 at 2:15pm | by Josh Norem

The Passport Pocket is slow. Way slow. Its read speed of our 3GB test file (590 seconds) was two minutes slower than that of the PNY and the Verbatim drives, and its write speed (636 sec) was three minutes slower than the PNY. That’s just ridiculous.

Click Read More for more. 

» Read More