All men are born truthful and die liars - Marquis de Vauvenargues
OVER THE PAST couple of years, flash memory has gone from some fairly-standard formats to a very differentiated market. Here is a look at three non-standard but inexpensive versions that we use regularly.
Most of these devices have a twist, and all are no larger than 'normal', but manage to do everything their bigger brethren do. I personally use all of these devices regularly, and heartily recommend each one, my work day would be a little bit more annoying without them. None carries an appreciable premium over its vanilla counterparts, and you can shouldn't have to pay more than $30 for one of these devices.
As you can see from the picture below, they are all about the size of a small coin and some are much smaller. In the order of most to least used, and clockwise from the top, they are the SuperTalent Pico A, Kingston Micro SDHC Mobility Multi Kit, and the OCZ Secure Digital Dual Memory Card.
Three memory sticks with a twist
Before we get into the soft and fuzzy bits, here are a few raw numbers. The flash sticks were all tested with SiSoft Sandra 2009 SP2 using the File Systems benchmark. All numbers are in MB/s, and two other drives, a Sandisk Cruzer Micro 1GB and a Pentax Photodrive 1GB were thrown in for comparison.
Card Performance with two extras for comparison
The SuperTalent Pico A is the one I use most, mainly because it is permanently affixed to my keychain. It is small enough to be totally unobtrusive, and unlike the unsheathed Pico C, it has a swiveling metal cover. If you buy from a quality vendor, most memory sticks tend to be fairly indestructible, but the cover never hurts.
The up side to the Pico A is the capacity, mine is an 8GB model, and having that much capacity can be a lifesaver day in and day out. You can copy almost anything to it and still have room left over. Running around trade shows, I find myself piling PDFs and press releases on it until I get bored, but I never run out of room. Clean the Pico off every once in a while, and you are good to go.
It is not perfect though, there are two down sides, one a minor quibble, the other a bit more serious. The serious gripe is the speed, or at least the speed related to the capacity. With a pretty slow write time, the slowest random writes of the three sticks, but one of the top sequential performers. If you are copying a large folder of files, this stick is painfully slow. Take the time to zip them beforehand, and writing is pretty fast, as is reading.
Picking a minor nit, we have hole size. Yeah, the little hole that the chain goes through is big enough for the chain, but a key ring won't fit through it. While the chain isn't the end of the world, I would prefer to have the Pico sitting unobtrusively between my keys. That said, it hasn't stopped me from carrying it every day for the last year or so.
Moving right along, we have the Kingston Mobility Multi Kit, it is basically a MicroSDHC card with a bunch of adapters and a carrying case. The card itself is a vanilla MicroSD or SDHC card, and the adapters turn it into a MiniSD, SD or USB device.
I keep the kit in my travel bag, and use the card in my video camera. The adapters will allow it to fit in nearly anything I run in to, and the case keeps all those sub-postage stamp adapters in one place. The base card is fast enough to save 1080p video from the Sanyo Xacti HD1000, and that is about all I need from it. Sequential writes are really fast, random are very good, and read speeds approach 10MB/s. Not bad for a MicroSD card.
Last up, we have something that hasn't been updated in a while, which is a pity becaus even with it's relative age, it manages to keep up nicely. The OCZ Secure Digital Dual Memory Card comes in 1 and 2GB capacities, and for the still camera I use it in, that is plenty. The top pulls off to reveal a USB plug, but other than that, it is a simple SD card.
If your laptop doesn't have an SD card reader, or you have the misfortune of owning a Sony laptop that sheds parts when it's slots are not breaking spontaneously, the Dual is worth it's weight in gold. The cover is very well designed, the bottom of it is the SD card itself, and most of the contact is from the sides. There is only a thin metal plate that covers the USB pins, so you lose little if any rigidity.
The most impressive part is that while the read speed is a little low, the write speed, especially the random write speed, is top notch. An 8 or 16GB Dual in SDHC would be a very nice addition to most devices. Toss in a hole for a chain, and it would be almost perfect.
In all, there is no real winner here, each device does something different. The similarities extend only to the USB port and the fact that they store files. Each one is worth having for a different reason, and you can't really go wrong with any of them. µ
Have you thought about reviewing some ssd express cards? Are there any out there with decent read & write speeds?
Have you thought about reviewing some ssd express cards? Are there any out there with decent read & write speeds?
"Memory stick" is a trademark of Sony, referring specifically to their flash memory card format. The products you're describing here are "flash memory cards" and "flash drives".
Those are some of worst flash memory rates ever, congrats. Now about Rhys Millen. LosVegas NoLimits Jump Startling from loop ramp 50' feet Up Off Ground,Over Pile of Brown Coke & BAM, UpRight. With Back Flip, Meaning it flip in opposite Direction of travel, landing upright mere 60 feet forward in Dashing spin, Much Like SAE Club Standard: Mini Baja racers Put Out on Show, where little Devils zip back & Forth at Incredible speeds, ALL Near Misses, yet perfect DIGITAL Control. Millen was engineering style Ramp & Obstacle.Greetings & R.I.P. E.Knievel Lost'8. TS Drashek
A Charlie article about something not nVidia. To read the comments on teh Charlie Vs. nVidia articles, you'd think he never wrote about anything else. Hmm, maybe an example for the rubes to look over? Nice article, BTW.
When you finish your holly war with NVIDIA, I'd really like you to look at all these flash crap producers. Those really deserve not only bashing, they deserve decent class action. Of course almost no one of us buy 3-4 warranty for them as oppose to, say, NVIDIA cards, laptops or desktops where NVIDIA/ATI cards are installed. So, for example, in 8-10 years I bought 20-30 flash cards and ALL OF THEM excluding 1 or 2 died pretty fast! It was a total lie about their reliable life span, they wear off in just several times of read/writes. Things do not improve with time at all and present flashes most probably will die in several months to one year too after *just several uses* making poducers huge profits since we will quicker go and get new ones. Make a calculation: in a decade this was approximately $1000 totally wasted, more than 2-4 NVIDIA cards (so far none of them ever died in my case, BTW, but one ATI card. I am not a hater of any videocard producer, BTW. And the only I hate with NVIDIA is its always installed nvsvc32 which makes video to hiccup. And kind of bad driver for my HDTV but this is rear TV brand and undocumented connection so this is excusable). The next decent target is harddrive crapmakers. Again 10-15 harddrives are dead after 1-2 years of work in 8-10 years. And how many of our days totally lost for reinstallations and upgrades? This started approximately in year 2000-2001 when all producers decreased disk warranties to one year. Third target - motherboard crappy producers. Those die in 3-4 years with 30-40% probability. Where are those 10-25 years warranties like Japanese TVs and cars decades ago had? Only Intel/AMD processors are really as good probably if not overclock them. This pipe of crappy trash will account for hundreds of billion of dollars in future trade deficit we can not afford to lose anymore. Anyway, all these cases are good discovery for a good journalist.
Sorry for some typos... Instead of "3-4 warranty" read "3-4 year warranty" which, decently, must be automatically included with any product, and we consumers have to buy 5-10 year ones
Those are very good reasons for liking them. Last semester in college I made the mistake of buying a 2GB PQI flash drive from the bookstore. That was the biggest piece of junk I have ever seen as far as flash drives go. I'll admit that I'm not really up to date on storage technology, but I have found my Kingston flash drives to be very durable and reliable. I have three 1GB drives and a 4GB. Two of the 1GB drives are about three years old, and have gone through the washing machine a couple times, yet still work perfectly. The 4GB one I got yesterday was $10 at Big Lots, about half the price of the PQI one that I bought. The 1GB ones were a little cheaper, but they are all at least 2 years old.