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Hardware Technology

Blazing Dual Channel Thumb Drive 216

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the my-keychain-is-going-to-go-on-strike dept.
Anonomisk Howard writes "The speed results from Big Bruin's review of OCZ's latest flash drive have me lusting for a new thumb drive. From the review: 'The OCZ Rally drive is not a radical new design, it does not look significantly different than any other USB 2.0 drive on the market, but then you plug it in and begin to use it. This thing smokes! The transfer times shown in the charts are what this drive is all about. If you want the fastest, sleekest, and most extreme drive currently on the market, this is the one to get.'"
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Blazing Dual Channel Thumb Drive More

Blazing Dual Channel Thumb Drive

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  • pe (Score:3, Funny)

    by uberjoe ( 726765 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @03:33PM (#14102680)
    If only my wife were this interested in speed.
    • Well you woulnd't want her to pop would you?

  • What They're Not Teaching In Sex Ed... (Score:5, Funny)

    by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @03:33PM (#14102683)
    ... lusting for a new thumb drive ...

    Ok, someone has a problem. :P

  • Burn, baby, burn! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @03:33PM (#14102690)
    "This thing smokes!"
    Isn't that the reason people stopped using those xbox cables?
  • ...another USB pen drive to loose the cap off of.

    • YOU WON'T LOSE THE CAP (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I bought one of these things yesterday at a computer store in Ottawa. $89 (cdn) for a 1-gig dual channel Rally flash drive and a short USB cable.

      (1) It's small. About as small as any thumb drive I've seen.

      (2) The outer shell of the drive AND THE CAP is made of thin metal and hard plastic. The cap contains a PLASTIC PLUG which mimics the shape of a USB port. The result is that the cap fits very snugly onto the drive's USB connector and has virtually zero chance of falling off.

      In addition, the loop for ha

    • You may want to check out one of the Apacer "Steno" drives [apacer.com]. The cap is strung through a braided cable loop that's molded into the sides of the drive. I've had mine for awhile now looped onto my keychain and its holding strong - lettering has worn off, though. It's also a pretty fast drive, as well, and quick Froogle shows the 512MB model is going for around $40.

  • but why (Score:5, Interesting)

    by JustNiz ( 692889 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @03:34PM (#14102702)
    Why do they make these usb key drives so friggin' big? THe electronics inside is probably like 1cm square.

    Whats with all the redundant plastic?

    • Re:but why (Score:2, Insightful)

      by fembots ( 753724 )
      Maybe to make sure you don't misplace it too easily?

      I'm sure James Bond uses the same thing but with a smaller form factor.

    • Re:but why (Score:5, Insightful)

      by iethree ( 666892 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @03:38PM (#14102727)
      if every thumb drive was 1cm square, you would lose within a week. the drives right now are just the right size to slip in a pocket or on a key ring, if they were any smaller they'd just be impractical.
      • if every thumb drive was[sic] 1cm square, you would lose within a week.

        And then they could sell you another one the next week...

      • if every thumb drive was 1cm square, you would lose within a week

        As long as they could still be attached to a keyring, it could be as small as physically possible, and I would lose it about as often as I lose my keys. (Which has never happened yet; knock on wood.)

        Jason.

      • if they were any smaller they'd just be impractical.

        Speak for yourself! I have a PQI I-Stick [pqi1st.com], which is teh tiny. It comes with an optional housing so you can carry it like a normal USB drive, on a keyring, etc, but it also comes with a credit-card sized plastic holder that can hold two keys, and slips into your wallet. It's great. I always have my wallet, so I always have my USB drive. I don't particularly want something else hanging off my keyring either.

        And I've had it over a year without losin

    • Re:but why (Score:5, Funny)

      by Minwee ( 522556 ) <dcr@neverwhen.org> on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @03:39PM (#14102729) Homepage
      They could probably make it as big as a Tic-Tac, but then people would either lose or swallow them.

      Getting USB 2.0 compatability _and_ a fresh minty flavour would drive the prices through the roof so it's just not going to happen.

    • For the majority of users there wouldn't be much advantage in making the drive smaller - it would just be a lot more inconvenient to handle. I wouldn't want to have to resort to tweezers to pry the pendrive out of the USB socket :p
    • ok i've seen some huge ones in my time but my current verbatim one (pic at http://www.audioholics.com/productreviews/avhardw a re/VerbatimUSBDriveReview.php [audioholics.com]) isn't too bad and the stick i had before that (still in use as a backup but the case usually falls apart when unplugging it and the connector is a bit bent after an incident when i kicked it whilst plugged in) is even smaller (think its a canyon one) and the one i gave to my sister a while back was somewhere in between.

      the smaller ones are small enough

    • Re:but why (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Red Flayer ( 890720 )
      Others have pointed out that it's easy to lose a very small item.

      Another factor is ease of use. I personally have sausage-fingers, so something 1-cm square is very awkward to handle. I'm sure other slashdotters have the same problem. Throw in the fact that I enjoy the occasional adult beverage (or three) in the evening, and that teeny drive is almost impossible to use.

      Also, many USB drives are recessed, it's hard to grasp something that doesn't stick out past the surface of your case at least a cm or

    • Re:but why (Score:2, Informative)

      by absinthminded64 ( 883630 )
      Geeks buy things that are smaller than the ones they already have. Vendors have given themselves room to un-grow and make more profit later on by reducing the size.

    • Re:but why (Score:5, Informative)

      by Randall311 ( 866824 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @04:03PM (#14102936) Homepage
      If you want a small USB drive (size of 2 pennies next to each other) that holds up to 1 GB, and comes with a credit card holder that can fit 2 memory sticks in your wallet, then check out the intelligent stick by PQI. You can find it on newegg here. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16820214009 [newegg.com]. I swear by this thing, it is so convienent to fit in your wallet with the credit card sized holder that it comes with. I have had mine for almost a year now and I absolutely love it. Like you said, these thumb drives could be a lot smaller then the're being made to be. PQI seems to be the only company that makes them this small. You can find a review here complete with specs. http://www.extrememhz.com/Intellistick20-p1.shtml [extrememhz.com] (I'm probably gonna get modded down for being offtopic, but I figured since we're talking about thumb drives, I might as well mention it. Cheers.
    • Although other posters have already pointed out the practical reasons for having them a certain size, you do raise a point about some of these USB drives. They are a bit bigger than they need to be and take up so much space that you can't plug anything into a USB port next to them (especially an issue with laptops). When I was shopping for one my main requirements were that it would not block another port, that it would be usable in Linux (generic mass storage driver-compatible), and that it has reasonabl
    • THe electronics inside is probably like 1cm square.

      Not necessarily.

      48 pin TSOP chips are often used for Flash memory, and are 1.2 cm x 2 cm. It's easier and cheaper to assemble a flash drive with TSOP chips rather than BGA. TSOP has the pins along two sides of the paackage. BGA has all the connections on the bottom in a grid, but without pins - just solder balls. Other technologies (such as COB) are not a good fit for the product (quantity, price point, manufacturing capacity, turn around, lead
    • It's people like you that made MiniSD and xD cards sellable. Come on people, there is a limit to how small something gets to where it becomes impracticle. Thankfully they stopped at somepoint with cellphones right?
    • Some are just designed poorly. The first large flash drive I had was a JetFlash 512. It was 1/3" thick, a good 5" long, and about 1 1/2" wide. It was a cow. Would block any adjacent port beside or above/below it, and would not even FIT into some computers with recessed USB ports.

      Now I have a 4gb SanDisk Cruzer Mini. 4gb, largest you can get, usb 2.0hs, huge activity light, and incredibly small profile. Won't block any adjacent ports. Everyone that uses a flash drive should have one of these. Only co

  • Gonna Order One Today (Score:3, Insightful)

    by RapidEye ( 322253 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @03:37PM (#14102714) Homepage
    I love my thumb drives, but trying to do "disk" intensive work like BIG spreadsheets can be a bit pokie. It looks like this is just what the Dr Ordered!

  • How much? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @03:39PM (#14102734)
    How much do advertisements like this cost? Sure could use some publicity like this for my business. That summary sounds like it was pasted from some webstore. The most extreme thumbdrive? Please.

    • Sponsors? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Valiss ( 463641 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @03:46PM (#14102778) Homepage
      Actually, my boss is looking to get in more advertising for our company. Appearantly, he wants me to do the web ad stuff. Is it actually possible to sponsor an article on /. or do we have to use the banners?

      I figured you were being sarcastic, but honestly I've seen so many 'articles' on this site, that maybe you were being serious.

    • Re:How much? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Evro ( 18923 ) <evandhoffman.gmail@com> on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @03:52PM (#14102835) Homepage Journal
      Slashdot frequently gets spamvertisements like these, but it seems that the product being spammed is more the website than the stupid drive itself - judging by the fact that the submitter's URL is the same as that of the story, this is clearly just a ploy to drive people to his site to spike his ad revenue.

      1. Write review of stupid product/service.
      2. Submit to Slashdot
      3. Profit
      4. Goto 1

      Slashdot's story queue is probably overflowing with trash like this "article." I can't believe that the one they accepted was about a "blazing" thumb drive. How fast can a fucking thumb drive be, and who fucking cares?

      • Re:How much? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Man Eating Duck ( 534479 )
        ...who fucking cares?
        The 1337 haxx0r that, after social-engineering your receptionist, your security people and your colleagues, wants to get a copy of your customer database and your shadow file before you get back from getting another coffee :)
        • My shadow file & customer db are read protected.

          lets see mr. 1336 haxx0r deal with that

        • Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English, please correct my errors! :)

          I think it's great that you're trying to improve your English. I only wish more native English speakers would the same! :p

          Although many people combine two sentences with a comma, doing so actually creates a run-on sentence that is grammatically incorrect. You can correct this by either saying:

          I'm trying to improve my English, so please correct my errors!

          ...or...

          I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!

          .

    • Re:How much? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Homology ( 639438 )
      How much do advertisements like this cost? Sure could use some publicity like this for my business. That summary sounds like it was pasted from some webstore. The most extreme thumbdrive? Please.

      On top of that it was just plain stupid, and as usual the "geeks" of /. just fell for it.

      • What was stupid? The drive benchmarked at twice the speed of the competition, who cares if they use a dumb word like "extreme." If the thing is that much better, it's worthy of positive press.

        Now if it turns out the benchmark was intentionally skewed (i.e. other existing competitive products were excluded from the test), then I agree with you.

        • Re:How much? (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Its a fucking advertisement. Its written like a circular for my local computer store, not an objective review/analysis.
      • as usual the "geeks" of /. just fell for it.

        Hahaha! You don't think we actually clicked on the link and read TFA do you? You must, as they say, be new here...

        • Hahaha! You don't think we actually clicked on the link and read TFA do you? You must, as they say, be new here...

          Some actually read more than the slashdot headlines, but you don't, but hey, you probably fight for f!rst p0st!

  • uuhh.. beavis.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by jrexilius ( 520067 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @03:39PM (#14102737) Homepage
    lusting after "sleek extreme thumb drives" and "drooling over transfer speeds" speaks of serious lack of girlfriendage...

  • But but (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @03:41PM (#14102743)
    Isn't the point of USB keys to make it easy to exchange files with other people? unless you're in a real hurry (like, say, you want to give photos to a friend, he's not home, you break in anyway, proceed to the computer, but your friend's rottweiler saw you and is coming at you) who really cares if it takes one more minute to transfer those files?

    The only things important to me are data integrity (a non-issue with 99% of the drives, even the cheapest ones), and a housing solid enough to make the thing survive the odd collection of objects it live with in my bag. Most other people who use these drives don't want anything else from them either.
    • Mine is for systems maintenance. We are always dealing with broken systems of one variety or another at work and you can't gaurentee net access since often they are infected and thus why we are daeling with them. So my key has things like 2000 SP4, XP SP2, a virus scanner, patches, etc.

      Well, espically for the service packs (I have one of these particular USB drives) the extra speed is really nice. Takes long enough as is. Also very nice for if I need to grab another program to install. Say they need Eclipse
    • "Isn't the point of USB keys to make it easy to exchange files with other people? unless you're in a real hurry (like, say, you want to give photos to a friend, he's not home, you break in anyway, proceed to the computer, but your friend's rottweiler saw you and is coming at you) who really cares if it takes one more minute to transfer those files?"

      When my office does blanket installs of (certain) software, it's done via USB key -- for 90+ PCs. At a minute saved per install, wouldn't you prefer more spe

    • Re:But but (Score:3, Insightful)

      by docbrown42 ( 535974 )
      Some of us aren't "most people", and would like more/faster thumb drives. Personally, I run Portable Thunderbird [johnhaller.com] off of one of mine, and I wouldn't mind a bit faster transfer speeds...especially when I have to backup 100+megs of email. Not to mention that opening a large pdf file off of a thumb drive can be a slow process.

      Just because you use your thumb drive one way, don't assume everyone else uses theirs the same way.
    • And in what way does better transfer rates not make it easier to exchange files? If it takes 30s to fill my thumbdrive instead of 3 minutes, well, yes, I would kind of care, especially when I'm about to shoot out the door and remember I was going to bring a GB or two of photos for a friend to see. I don't want to be thinking "damn, I don't have time", and hell yeah I'd be willing to pay a bit more to not have to do so.

      My HD's for the past few years have pushed 50M/s STR. I'm sorry you can't see why I mig
    • If your purpose is to portably exchange files with other people, the flashpoint sharedrive [sharedrives.com] is an all-in-one device that will allow you store files and transfer them directly to someone elses thumbdrive, but with the disadvantage that you are stuck sending a fixed set of files stored in your outbox directory. Also, if your source files are larger than the destination drive then I believe it is supposed to stop and give you an error light or something.

      One solution with greater versatility is the Aleratec U [aleratec.com]

    • The only things important to me are data integrity (a non-issue with 99% of the drives, even the cheapest ones)

      I totally agree. What surprised the hell out of me was that one day (for some odd reason) I copied a large file from a USB stick to the HD twice (different names). I was totally baffled when I found out that the files didn't compare 100%. Tried it several times, and everytime I copied the file off, it was different by 5 or 6 bytes (a 64MB file or something).

      This was on a 128MB PQI Intelligent Stick [pqi1st.com]
  • I mean, unless this kind of performance is built into a camera, video or music player then who cares that it takes 20 seconds less time to transfer a few hundred megs of file to a flash drive. I have never found myself wishing my thumb drive was faster for transfering content.

    Also, probably a big also, most systems hard drives significantly underperform, so are you even going to get that much improvement by a faster USB drive? No matter what I have done, I have never gotten sustained 48MB/s transfer from
    • No matter what I have done, I have never gotten sustained 48MB/s transfer from any IDE hard drive.

      I get that when transfering GB-sized files from one disk to the other (SATAATA133), but that's far from typical transfers, like those when you're starting and application up. Slow random (track-to-track) HD read speeds ensure you don't get more then 10MB/s at best. And, if you by accident start up two big apps at once... go for a coffee break.

      On the other hand, random access on flash is almost as fast as seque

  • Aluminum vs. Plastic (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Red Flayer ( 890720 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @03:48PM (#14102796) Journal
    The review makes a big deal of the casing being made of aluminum, not plastic, and the unit having some heft to it (making it feel more solid).

    I don't know why this is an advantage, however, other than cosmetically. Aluminum cases are a tiny bit more mechanically stable than plastic, especially cheap plastics... but since I'm not hitting my flash drives with a hammer, it doesn't matter to me. Proper design would prevent flexion from being a problem too, if I accidentally left it in my back pocket and sat down or something.

    I'm also guessing that manufacturing costs for aluminum are less, not sure about materials cost.

    Anyone out there who could shed some insight into why aluminum is preferred over well-designed plastic?
    • Anyone out there who could shed some insight into why aluminum is preferred over well-designed plastic?

      To lull stupid reviewers into writing good reviews?
    • Anyone out there who could shed some insight into why aluminum is preferred over well-designed plastic?

      Aluminum tends to bend in situations where plastic would crack or shatter.

      But, that said, we're talking about a light, farily small product here. I throw my iPod Shuffle accross the room at the wall to freak people out, and it has held up fine.
    • > Anyone out there who could shed some insight into why aluminum is preferred over well-designed plastic?

      Because aluminum is more EXTREME.

      The last thumb drive I read, which did a much better job, indicated that performance increased with block size even out to several MB blocks. If my thumb drive usage is any indication, we're mostly dealing with smaller sizes. I would have liked to have seen in the review some more scientific methodology regarding this issue.
    • I doubt aluminum is necessarily cheaper than plastic as a manufacturing process, except in very specific unusual cases. If it were, I don't think so many cheap devices would use plastic.

      I think aluminum looks and feels nicer in many cases, and anodizing helps it maintain its appearance and gives it pretty colors in a shiny part.

      "Flexion" doesn't seem to be a term that applies to this, so I don't know what you mean.

      I would think that if you want a part to survive a hit with a hammer, polycarbonate would be
      • Not sure if the cost savings for plastics is in materials cost or production costs, but it's pretty obviously cheaper.

        Re: flexion, sorry for applying my physiology vocab to mechanics... what I mean is 'bendyness,' dunno the ME term.

        And my point is that I'm not going to hit it with a hammer, which is why I don't need ultra-tough casings. :)
      • Aluminum is very cheap, however plastic is easier to heat to a liquid and mold. Aluminum for an application like this you would most likely have to mill, which is a more expensive process.

        -everphilski-
    • Aluminum is stronger by volume and harder by volume and weight and will flex quite a bit before it breaks. What this means to the user is an aluminum shell makes the device thinner. Further, anodized aluminum doesn't scratch as easily as plastic, especially some of the better anodizings available (like type III mil-spec).
    • My favorite feature on a thumb drive was on my PNY Attache 256MB.

      It had a manual write-protect switch.

  • 17MB/sec != "blazing speed" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kilgortrout ( 674919 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @03:49PM (#14102802)
    I think it's really stretching things to refer to anything that writes at 17MB/sec as having "blazing speed". Sure it's faster than most thumb drives but that's like bragging about being the world's tallest midget.

  • This would be nice (Score:2, Informative)

    by nkntr ( 583297 )
    For Linux based DNS servers, Routers, reverse proxy web servers, proxy servers, and other mostly static disk content Linux based devices --- boot from Linux, give you the ability to change on the fly (unlike live CD's), and be cheap and effective in most scenarios (as long, of course, as you kept /var and /tmp in a ramdrive to prevent overusing your flash media (save both volumes to a .tgz and store them to flash at shutdown, and restore to ramdrive at bootup))

  • "Fastest" I will grant them. (Score:5, Funny)

    by GungaDan ( 195739 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @03:52PM (#14102837) Homepage
    "Sleekest," though? It looks like every other usb flash drive. Maybe if they mounted a spoiler on it, or added some racing stripes. Or speed holes. Speed holes make everything sleeker.

    • My USB key is the fastest around.

      I've got a bolt on spoiler, a folgers can (spray painted gloss black), and NOS stickers.

      Hell, the NOS stickers alone get me an extra 2MB/s.
    • "Sleekest," though? It looks like every other usb flash drive. Maybe if they mounted a spoiler on it, or added some racing stripes. Or speed holes. Speed holes make everything sleeker.

      You mean like the heat spreaders on these [ocztechnology.com]?

      --
      The universe is a figment of its own imagination.

  • This will be really useful... (Score:5, Funny)

    by cybergibbons ( 554352 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @04:00PM (#14102905) Homepage
    ... the next time I bypass the alarm systems, break into someone's office, hack into their PC (which is running a previously unseen user interface which is some bastard child of XP and OS/2 Warp), and begin copying their hard drive to my uber-leet turbo thumb-drive.

    Every time I have done this before, they have come back with about 30 seconds left to finish, leaving me with little option but to hide in the filing cabinet.

    James Bond

    (Has anyone else noticed that the time remaining in films is always accurate, and doesn't jump around like the real life ones?)

  • Basic questions (Score:3, Interesting)

    by spitzak ( 4019 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @04:01PM (#14102916) Homepage
    Okay, I guess I'm not a big enough geek to directly recognize whether something is fast or slow. Need some basic questions answered:

    1. What is the transfer rate of this thing?
    2. What is the fastest that could be done based on the USB port design?
    3. What is the transfer rate to a typical internal hard disk?
    4. What is the transfer rate of a typical USB thumb drive?
    5. What is the transfer rate of a typical large external USB drive?

    Printing a few ratios would go a long way to knowing whether this really is a big deal.

  • These things rock (Score:5, Informative)

    by jambarama ( 784670 ) <jambarama AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @04:03PM (#14102937) Homepage Journal
    If you google [google.com] around you'll [bjorn3d.com] find this [hardcoreware.net] thing really [rojakpot.com] is freaking [phoronix.com] fast . [thetechzone.com] This isn't just an ad, it is the fastest flash drive around. And you can get them for $25 + S/H [tigerdirect.com]. I've got one and I must say, they are solid (metal casing) and noticably faster than any other flash drive I've used.
    • Why is it so much faster than other pen drives ?

      Does it simply employ much faster memory ? Extra-fast memory that acts as a buffer ? Does it do away with things like integrity checks - taking a bet that their memory is fine, and the writes are fine ?

      I'm going to guess the manufacturer won't tell us :)
  • That was the tag line on the last thumb drive I purchased. If this thing isn't like having more then 144 floppies in my pocket, I'll have nothing to do with it. -Rick

  • "real world speeds" (Score:3, Interesting)

    by j1mmy ( 43634 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @04:20PM (#14103056) Journal
    I like how his "real word" test involved copying cd images of commercial software. Just what does he use this thing for?

  • Lexar Lightning (Score:3, Informative)

    by JLester ( 9518 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @04:25PM (#14103092)
    Wonder why they didn't test it against some of the other high speed flash drives? We use the Lexar Lightnings at work. They are rated about the same as this one. I haven't benchmarked them myself, but they are noticeably faster than any others we have tried, plus they come with very nice sync and encryption software.

    Jason

  • AnandTech flash drive roundup (Score:5, Informative)

    by fizzyl ( 205369 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @04:27PM (#14103108)
    AnandTech has a more comprehensive review of many flash drives, and the OCZ is far from being the fastest.

    Although it could be considered the cheapest fast drive in a way...

    http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=254 9 [anandtech.com]

  • Okay, dual channel is great, but... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by merreborn ( 853723 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @04:38PM (#14103200) Journal
    Why not take this further? If you can write data twice as fast by simultaneously writing to two internal flash chips, why not use 4? or 8? Hell, then you can even internally RAID 5 'em!

    And don't even start with the "What, aren't flash drives fast enough already!?" line. My company was tasked with setting up a accounting firm to cheaply work from home, via USB thumb drives. Copying 3 meg spread across a few thousand small files took something on the order of 15 minutes. It's pretty hard to get people to synch nightly on their way out the door with times like that.
  • The results seem to disagree with the review of the Transcend Jetflash here http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/20050520/index .html [tomshardware.com]

    "At 27 MB/sec maximum read transfer rate, Transcend has set the bar pretty high for its competition."
    • I have this thumb drive and it is very fast. The only catch here is that those transfer rates only apply to the Jetflash 2gb model. The 512k model is about half as fast. The OCZ drive seems to be the fastest for 512k drives. I just want to know why OCZ short-changes you on utility software for it.

      I noticed in AnandTech's USB roundup that they compared against the Jetflash 512K model, not the 2gb. They also tested the OCZ 512k "Rally" drive and it was much slower than the numbers quoted in the /. articl

  • "Most Extreme" (Score:5, Funny)

    by Cr0w T. Trollbot ( 848674 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @04:40PM (#14103222)
    "If you want the fastest, sleekest, and most extreme drive currently on the market, this is the one to get."
    I'm sorry, but due to the terms of the Federal Hype Reduction Act of 2001, use of the phrase "extreme" in any technical product review is punishable by a mandatory 1 year sentence in a Federal DeHyping Educational Camp. Enjoy hours of knitting and watching PBS from within the soothing pastel confines of Club Fed, my friend...

    Crow T. Trollbot

  • Oh shit... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Graymalkin ( 13732 ) * on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @05:40PM (#14103678)
    that's extreme!
  • I know they're big and bulkey, but I dig my USB hard drive enclosure. Works with any IDE hard drive, and my 80 gig Seagate Barracuda gets over 25 MB/s transfer rates. This is my little baby:

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16817146052 [newegg.com]

    Cheap, fast, and as much storage as I want to put in it.

  • For Comparison (Score:3, Informative)

    by fredistheking ( 464407 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @06:11PM (#14103903)
    Data Stolen From Storage Review:

    Transfer Rate - Begin (MB/s)

    Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 (400 GB SATA) - 69.8
    Western Digital Caviar WD3200JD (320 GB SATA) - 66.5
    Maxtor MaXLine III (300 GB SATA) - 65.7
    Western Digital Caviar WD2500JD (250 GB SATA) - 60.6
    Hitachi Deskstar 7K400 (400 GB SATA) - 60.4
    Samsung SpinPoint P80 (160 GB SATA) - 60.2

    Transfer Rate - End (MB/s)

    Western Digital Caviar WD3200JD (320 GB SATA) - 40.8
    Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 (400 GB SATA) - 39.9
    Western Digital Caviar WD2500JD (250 GB SATA) - 37.8
    Maxtor MaXLine III (300 GB SATA) - 37.2
    Samsung SpinPoint P80 (160 GB SATA) - 36.5 |
    Hitachi Deskstar 7K400 (400 GB SATA) - 32.9

    Looks like the flash drives still have a way to go to compete with current hard drives data rates.
  • Striped storage? I could swear there is a RAID mode for this ;-)

    Tom

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