Kingston DataTraveler Elite - USB flash drive - 2 GB

Title
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We (or probably just a sad few of us) used to use the tem sneakernet to apply to the technique of passing data around a network by saving to a floppy, running over to another machine and putting the floppy into the a: drive. Those days were pretty much behind us but thanks to USB memory sticks they seam to be making a bit of a come back. I again find myself putting some data onto a removable device and moving it from one machine to another. Nowadays of course I'm not taking about1MB that I could put on a floppy disk but instead 1GB or even more.

What is a USB memory stick?
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This is a small USB device which has some non-volatile memory chips inside it. The term non-volatile describes the ability of these memory chips to retain data even after the power is removed. These are generally something called Nand chips. Most of the chips used in memory sticks seem to be made by Samsung regardless of the make of stick itself. When they first came onto the market these devices were available in16 or 32MB capacities. This is already 10 to 20 times the storage of a single floppy disk. Now however these devices are available up to1GB, 2GB or even 4GB.

Not only is the capacity of these vastly superior to floppy disks the speed of reading and writing files to them is improved many fold. When you study a computers performance you are required to learn that RAM (the internal memory your computer uses all the time) is many times faster than a hard disk which in turn is many times faster than a floppy disk. Nand chips are not as fast as RAM however whey are a lot faster than a hard disk. Memory sticks connect to a computer by plugging into one of the USB ports on the computer. There are 2 generations of USB typically found today 1.1 and 2.0. There is a huge difference is speed between the two versions (a fast internet link is faster than a USB 1.1 interface). A memory stick connected into a USB 2.0 interface will work at a great speed whereas an older 1.1 speed will be very slow. Almost all USB2 devices work in a 1.1 interface. They just switch down to slow speed.

My Purchase
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At work a colleague had a need for a memory stick to transfer files between our Network and a disconnected, customer's network; a memory stick was the ideal way. After some shopping around I purchased two Kingston Data Traveller Elite memory sticks with 2GB capacity. I figured I'd find a need for one as well.

What do you get?
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You get a silver plastic device, with a removable lid and a little LED. Take the lid off and there's the USB interface, plug this into your computer and wait a few seconds. The balloons in Windows start to popup as it finds another disk and soon the USB device is ready to use. Now if you look in My Computer, or Windows Explorer you'll see another drive letter. You can use this device as-is or you can install the supplied software to get some extra functions. The supplied software is on the device itself - pretty handy.

Supplied software
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You can install the Kingston supplied software onto your PC. This then allows you to create an encrypted area on the memory stick. Any data you copy into this area can then only be read if a password is supplied (although can you designate individual machines as always trusted so those PCs don't need a password). Be careful though as creating the secure area reformats the memory stick and loses all data currently on it. You can allocate the 2GB between standard and encrypted areas but any changes in allocation will wipe all data again.

I do know that some companies use these types of devices for secure backups of data such as payroll that they don't want to store on the network. If the data you are saving to the device has any kind of personal information then you really should be securing it like this (as a minimum), these things are small and could be lost - anyone finding would be able to get your data straight back out from the unsecured area.

What can you do with it?
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2GB is a lot of disk space it's approximately three CDs worth of data. It's very handy if you have a bunch of files you want to move around. I'll often put an image file of a CDROM onto the device. You can then move the memory stick to another machine and installed the CD of software directly from the memory stick.

My golden rule is always to try and remember to stop the device in Windows before you remove it When the device is connected you will find an extra icon in the system tray, click on this once you can then select to stop the removable device.

The downside
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The only downside with this memory stick is its physical size the device is about 6cm long making it a larger than many other memory sticks however, there may be no way to fit the memory capacity into a smaller device.

Recommendation
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There are a lot of different memory stick devices on the market and the minutes. I tend to think of Kingston as one of the better makes and this certainly is a high capacity. Kingston compares pretty well on price and the speed and encryption software count in its favour. As this device is reliable, fast, good value, has encryption, I'd give it a recommendation but it's physically way bigger than my other memory sticks.

Despite being a computer reseller, we found our best price was ebuyer at £107.91 plus VAT. This was in June 2005 but if you check the links around this review you'll find the current price.