USB Flash Drive Roundup - 10/2005
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 4, 2005 11:28 AM EST- Posted in
- Memory
Lexar JumpDrive Lightning
Lexar's only entry in this roundup is their top of the line JumpDrive Lightning. The high end Lightning drive is only available in two sizes: 1GB and 2GB.
The only downside to Lexar's drive is that the flash controller that Lexar uses does not have a hardware encryption engine, thus there is a significant performance penalty for reading/writing to your secure partition. The table below displays read/write speed for various file sizes to a Secure as well as a Public partition on the Lexar drive.
As you can see, reads are noticeably slower to the secure partition, as are writes, especially at smaller file sizes. In many cases, the performance of reading/writing to the secure partition is far less than half of working with the public partition. It's a major downside to the security benefits that Lexar offers.
The Lexar drive is a bit more stylish than what Kingston has to offer, but the downside to that is, of course, that it shows fingerprints and smudges much like an iPod. Lexar includes a polishing cloth to remove the blemishes, which although it works very well, it is still a pain that you have to do it. The case of the JumpDrive Lightning adds significant weight to the unit, which is another expense that you pay in order to support the style of the drive.
If you purchase the drive from Lexar's online store, you can get a free engraving on the unit itself, which is a nice option that's offered.
Lexar's only entry in this roundup is their top of the line JumpDrive Lightning. The high end Lightning drive is only available in two sizes: 1GB and 2GB.
The only downside to Lexar's drive is that the flash controller that Lexar uses does not have a hardware encryption engine, thus there is a significant performance penalty for reading/writing to your secure partition. The table below displays read/write speed for various file sizes to a Secure as well as a Public partition on the Lexar drive.
| 0.5KB | 32KB | 256KB | 2048KB | 65536KB | ||||||
| Read | Write | Read | Write | Read | Write | Read | Write | Read | Write | |
| Secure | 984 | 4 | 14809 | 279 | 16990 | 1903 | 17033 | 4881 | 17476 | 8738 |
| Public | 1000 | 69 | 19099 | 3507 | 26176 | 11750 | 26624 | 14131 | 26214 | 15292 |
As you can see, reads are noticeably slower to the secure partition, as are writes, especially at smaller file sizes. In many cases, the performance of reading/writing to the secure partition is far less than half of working with the public partition. It's a major downside to the security benefits that Lexar offers.
The Lexar drive is a bit more stylish than what Kingston has to offer, but the downside to that is, of course, that it shows fingerprints and smudges much like an iPod. Lexar includes a polishing cloth to remove the blemishes, which although it works very well, it is still a pain that you have to do it. The case of the JumpDrive Lightning adds significant weight to the unit, which is another expense that you pay in order to support the style of the drive.
If you purchase the drive from Lexar's online store, you can get a free engraving on the unit itself, which is a nice option that's offered.
| Lexar JumpDrive Lightning | |
| Sizes Available | 512MB - 2GB |
| Lanyard Included | No |
| USB Extension Cable Included | No |
| Data Encryption | Yes (Windows only) |
| Password Protection | Yes (Windows Only) |
| Secure + Public Partitions Simultaneously Accessible | Yes |
| Flash Controller | ? |
| Flash Memory | ? |
| Warranty | Lifetime Limited |
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sprockkets - Thursday, October 6, 2005 - link
Although not reviewed here, I got the A Data key from newegg.com simply because they say it works with Linux on the package. I know any key will, but they are the only ones to have the guts to say it. Thanks for admitting Linux exists. Lifetime warranty too.jgh - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link
here is a link for another link, to an app that can make many (but probably not all) usb drives bootable and a couple of other hints/tips.http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/5735">link
O.T. - for some reason i get a message that says i do not have permission to access this forum when i tried to create a new login with my e-mail address. did i get banned or something? i have only posted once (it was about the gta:lcs website). i also cannot log in with the origianl user name and password.
p.s. - it is o.k. to post links like this right?
Toolsac - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link
I just wanna say thanks to anand for bring us all so much info on every nook and crany of computing. When ever I am getting ready to upgrade or have a problem with my computer, Anand can help me. THANKS GUYS YOU ROCK!!!GameManK - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link
also curious about the memorex drives like the m-flyerhoppa - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link
Cool article, and a nice summary of the market (the intro stuff), but seriously, who really cares that much about the perfomance of these things when the entire thing can be written or read in <1 minute anyway. I do love benchmarks though (born and will die a stat-whore)!I have a suggestion for the article: can you post a single picture of all the drives (preferably with a key). I'd like to see what they all look like but I wasn't too crazy at all about clicking through 20 pages. In fact, I only made it through 4.
-andy
vexingv - Friday, October 21, 2005 - link
its an iomega 256mb and claims to be usb2, but is ridiculously slow compared to a generic 64mb drive i have. i've tried transferring about 20mb worth of portable firefox on the two drives side-by-side and the iomega drive took close to 5 minutes while my other drive took less than a minute.these benchmarks are really useful for that purpose of finding drives w/ faster flash memory controllers.
Souka - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link
REad the article....less than 1 min? Read it....not happening.Write times had the biggest delta....upto 20x speed difference....
So would you rather watch your drive write data for 3.5mins, or almost an hour?
Far as "clicking through 20 pages" Click once on the "Print this Article"....then you just use page down(or equivalent button) to scroll through
Chriz - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link
This was a good roundup, but I was also curious on some other drives that can be found on Newegg. Mainly interested in the Apacer drives and also the Memorex M-flyer...which got a good review in Maximum PC because of the retractable USB connector which seems convenient to me, but I am really not sure on the performance compared to other drives.intellon - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link
And why was iPod Shuffle excluded? Is it cuz of security matter/ bigger size/ higher cost? Cuz I use half of my shuffle for transfering files to and from - work, home and school.jkostans - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link
Because its an mp3 player. There are plenty of ipod shuffle type players out there which aren't included, some smaller and more compact. I'm sure they would be with the slowest of the slow.