Memina Rocket

Special thanks to Newegg for providing the Memina Rocket drive for this roundup.


The Memina Rocket drive (not the Pocket Rocket) is the longest drive out of this roundup, but thanks to its plastic shell, it is no heavier than Kingston's DataTraveler Elite.

Like the DataTraveler Elite, the Rocket features a maximum capacity of 4GB, and is larger than most other drives. Despite its length, the Rocket is actually quite slender, but more important than its dimensions is the Rocket's USB cap. While most drives feature a removable USB cap, Memina's Rocket has a swinging cap that is physically attached to the drive. To reveal the USB connector, simply pull on the cover, rotate it 180 degrees, and you're ready for business.


The Memina Rocket actually uses four NAND flash devices in order to improve performance and allow for high capacity models. As an unfortunate result, the Rocket is a fairly long drive.

The beauty of Memina's design is that you have no cap to lose and the implementation on the Rocket still maintains a very solid build quality, unlike other designs that attempt to do something similar.

 Memina Rocket
Sizes Available 512MB - 4GB
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 Costar/OTi OTi002165-G
Flash Memory Samsung K9F2G08U0M
Warranty Lifetime Limited

Lexar JumpDrive Lightning OCZ Rally
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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-flyer
  • hoppa - 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.

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