The floppy drive is deadââ,¬"or at least nearly so. Of course, the floppy's death knell started ringing years ago when Zip drives and Super floppy drives were introduced. So floppy drive fans may still be chuckling at the reports of its impending demise.
This time, however, there might be good reason for the old standby to take notice.
The arrival of portable USB storage devicesââ,¬"so small that they fit easily in your pocket and even sport rings for easy key chain attachmentââ,¬"may finally put the venerable floppy to rest.
These portable devices store from 8 MB to 2.1 GB of data and take up a fraction of the space of other storage options. Think about it: A 16-MB ThumbDrive, which, as its name implies, is no bigger than your thumb (but that depends on the size of your thumb, I suppose), stores the equivalent of roughly 10 floppy disks. Walk around with 10 floppy disks in your pocket and see how that feels.
Storage capacity and portability make these devices incredibly convenient tools; their only drawback may be their price. But, as you'll see, the prices vary widely, and when you break it down to cost per megabyte, some of these devices are beginning to shine as viable replacements for floppy disks and even CDs.
The contenders
We got our hands on four portable devices to try out. What was perhaps most surprising was how different these devices were and how devices so simple could incorporate useful features to differentiate themselves. The products we reviewed are EasyDisk.com's EasyDisk, M-Systems' DiskOnKey, Transcend Information's JetFlash, and Trek 2000's ThumbDrive.
As you can see from the photograph in Figure A, the devices are all quite small. In fact, I could easily fit all four of them in my pocket without a problem.
Figure A
Portable USB storage contenders
Though one of our review products stored considerably more data than the others, the overall offerings are comparable. The ThumbDrive, EasyDisk, and JetFlash devices pictured store up to 16 MB of data, while the DiskOnKey in the photo above stores 512 MB.
Features
While they have comparable data storage capacities, it's in the additional features that these drives distinguish themselves. In addition to password protection, the devices can also be formatted with boot features. Both of these are potentially useful options that could make the devices very attractiveââ,¬"especially given the cost per MB you ultimately pay for themââ,¬"as replacements for floppy or CD, but there are some unfortunate caveats that dull the luster for some of the devices.
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Great article. I am just starting looking for USB storage devices.