A few months ago, my work laptop got stolen along with my 1 gig thumb drive in the case. Now I can’t find my old 128 meg thumb drive. Last week, someone showed me a 4 gig one they had gotten at Costco for under $150. I was headed there anyway and low and behold, they had an 8 gig model for $120. Reading the package it turns out to not be flash memory at all but an actual hard disk! It’s powered by a USB connector which folds out from the package. I bought it on the spot.
Made by I/O Magic who is long known in hobbiest circles for a wide assortment of peripherals, the GigaBank 8 uses the same size hard disk used in an increasing number of PDAs, mpeg3 players and so on. Although the included software (Win98SE driver (none needed for XP) and a backup program called PowerBackup) is for Windows, the GigaBank also works on the Mac. I copied a file from my Mac Mini to the drive and then to my XP-based pc and it all worked as expected.
I/O Magic also makes GigaBanks in this size with 2, 4 and 6 gig drives. For some reason, the 8 gig version doesn’t come with the leather carrying case the others do. They all do come with a short USB extension for connecting into places where even this tiny package won’t fit. There are also bigger (size and gigs) versions available up to 100 gigs that can still fit in your pocket.
Obviously, a hard disk isn’t as robust as a flash drive, so if you need something that can be tossed against a wall and still work, this isn’t for you. On the other hand, if you need to back up lots of data that you can carry around in your pocket, this might just be the ticket.
Tell me I’m wrong, but I’, skeptical of carrying a hard drive around in my pocket. I’ve always felt that HDs are too fragile for the bouncing around your pocket would give it.
I still think the future will be in flash / solid state memory.
They are getting close to 8-10gb flash drives. At that size, you could put your entire OS on a flash drive and have instant-on. Some laptop manufacturers are starting to do this with smaller solid-state RAM drives.
I’m still using a 3-year-old 1gb hard drive in my favorite digital camera. It’s survived New Mexico outdoors wanderings just fine — including a couple of artistic falls down snowy slopes.
I have a couple USB hard drives myself… originally, I was skeptical because they’re not flash, but the price was great.
In practice, I’ve been using them for a half a year now, because when on the road I need a local mirrored copy of a clients material to work off of. I’ve found them suprisingly durable and either I or those I work with use them every day with lots of success.
I find it odd that Uncle Dave would want to use a 128 MB flash drive … they’re really to small to be practically useful if you want to move much around (barring basic Word documents and the like …)
Back when I bought it, that was a pretty hefty size. As I said, my 1 gig flash drive was stolen with my computer.
I have a 4GB GIGABANK drive and have used it extensively. It has one MAJOR limitation – it heats up like a son-of-a-gun! It gets so hot on large data file transfers that it is very uncomfortable to hold and will cause the drive to cease functioning until it has cooled down! I attempted to transfer almost 900 MB from a key to the GigaBank and the GigaBank lost connection after about 700 MB of transfer due to heat. The drive connection simply disappeared! I let the drive cool down and then the computer could see it again.
Because of the heat issues I back up the necessary data off of the GigaBank. Another user noted that their drive failed after repeatedly getting too hot. (I am talking almost burning your fingers hot!)
It is also faster than some of the USB Memory Sticks going around. I use a variety of portable apps on the GigaBank and on USB Mem sticks and the GigaBank always seems faster. It will, with judicious care, probably out last the Memory Sticks as those have a lifespan measured in writes. The GigaBank doesn’t.
Word of caution. Be careful with these drives.
If you want those thumb drives to last long, do not open an MSWord file directly from USB, transfer them first to your hard disk before editing them. I think Word does not perform disk monitoring when writing backups of files. As a result, these backup files could overwrite the directory structure of USB flash drives.