These things are getting better every day. When I was in the service, the size of the hard drive in the mainframe of the site I worked in was 50 Megs, and it was state of the art back then (late ’70’s). The 2 x 2-inch ByteSize (haha) drive can carry 2 orders of magnitude more in a form factor about as big as a box of matches.
The ByteSize drive is available in 6- or 8-Gig configurations, with the largest costing under $150. There isn’t much about it online yet, but here’s the link to the release.
There are other drives in this category, but so far this is the least expensive I’ve seen in this size with this much storage. If you’ve seen something better, let us know.
Amazing how technology keeps on going better and better. Nice USB flash disks, might get one when it comes out here in the Phils.
Roll,
These are not flash disks, they are hard drives.
Semantics. They use flash memory. “Disk” is just a generic handle.
Sorry to be a stickler for facts but these contain spinning platters, thus they can crash. True flash memory has no moving parts and therein is a critical advantage.
That is not to say a given device of one mechnical makeup may not out perform a competing design, but motion vs pure memory means your mileage may vary.
Every device I’ve seen with that form factor (square box w/extendable USB cable) is a micro-drive type device, and this is no exception. This is a portable hard drive.
I’m looking forward to the day when the true flash memory USB sticks in this size come down to a reasonable price level…
My first hard drive: Northstar Horizon, 18MB, 80lbs!, $4,000!!. Single 12″ platter, 4 heads (each pair covering half the disk). But nothing like “The First” RAMAC from IBM: 5MB, 2,000lbs!!, $500.000. 50 years ago, when half a $mil was worth sumthin.
Blue Ray etc. can’t compete with this.
Mea Culpa. My error. I was rushing and since it didn’t specify the underlying storage in the release, assumed it was flash. Sorry for the mixup.
It’s still a nice drive.
This is a ram drive..NOT a USB RAM..
there is a difference.
1. is solid…this DOES have moving parts, and can be damaged, IF you are not carefull.
I bought a Memorex 6gb traveldrive the other day…$119. Tiny (same size as the pic above). Even comes with a belt-loop case, which isn’t much taller than a belt. Very geeky.
This is like the one I bought a while ago. $120 at Costco, $100 at Fry’s.
That one looks a little bigger.
A little bit bigger: 2 5/8″ x 1 7/8″ x .5″
I wonder what the speed of the ByteSize is?