PNY Technologies USB 2.0 Attache Drive
| Introduction: |
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The quest for useful, convenient, fast and safe storage has taken several turns over the past few years. I clearly recall the days of the 360K 5.25" floppy disk, which quickly faded into the 720K 3.5" floppy. Things progressed, and the CDRW was invented, followed by the MiniDisc, and DVDRW. The problem with all these types of media is that they are disks - susceptible to scratching or highly susceptible to magnetic fields. Throughout the last few years, flash storage has started to become more popular. From MP3 players, to Digital Cameras, Voice Recordings and more, Flash Storage is very useful. It is fast, secure, and is now a lot smaller and easier to pack around that disks. |
| Today, I'm going to be looking at PNY Technologies USB2.0 Attache Disk. The model I'm looking at is a 128MB version - a little on the small side in today's Gigabyte world - but certainly a device worth having. Let's take a look at the package, and how well the USB2.0 interface performs compared to other flash media on a USB1.1 interface. |
| The Package: |
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| The package includes everything you need to get going. The drive, a 3" driver CD for Win98, a 3' USB extension cable, and a super long lanyard. When attached to the USB2.0 drive it actually hangs down below my belly button. . . there's a thought that will keep you up at night. |
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| A couple of shots, up close and personal. |
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| The unit itself is quite small. It is less than 9cm long, about 2cm wide, and is just over 1cm thick. It is simple plug-and-play in Windows ME, 2000 and XP. If using it in Windows 98, you'll need to install the drivers and reboot. |
| Test Setup & Performance: |
| I used my main rig, which supports USB2.0 running Windows XP for these tests. For comparison, I used a 128MB SD Flash card in a USB1.1 Reader/Writer. The file transfer tests were copied from one Hard Drive to the Flash devices, then copied back to another Hard Drive. Tests were ran multiple times to ensure accuracy. |
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(PNY Attache USB2.0 HDTach)
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(SD Card in USB1.1 Reader/Writer)
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| The following is a shot of how "real world" transfers go down. Again, the tests were repeated several times to ensure accuracy. After seeing this chart, I'm sure that when you're shopping for a flash storage product, you'll go with USB2.0. When writing to the flash drive, the PNY Attaché is over 3.5x faster. When reading data from the flash storage, the PNY USB2.0 Attache is over 11.5x faster. Incredible performance for such a small, handy product. |
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(Time listed in seconds. Lower is better.)
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| Conclusion: |
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I'll make it short. I love PNY Technologies' USB2.0 Attache Drive. It's small, handy, and fast. I live in a rural area where all I get is dial-up internet at 28.8, so when I make trips to town, I always stop in at Dallmann Computers and use his ADSL to snag the latest software updates. Before the Attache, I used a lot of CDR's, and ended up scratching a few CDRW's to death. The PNY USB2.0 Attache allows me to get most of the updates I need, and all in a tidy package, with no waste. Handy, handy, handy. If you are wondering what to stick in the stocking of your favorite geek this Christmas, head on over to your local BestBuy or FutureShop and pick up a PNY USB2.0 Attache. You'll be loved . . . even more than before. |
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| If you have any questions or comments regarding this review, please head on over and post them here. |
