USB flash drives are the single best way of temporarily storing and transporting data. They're small, durable, fast, and capable of some serious storage (up to 32GB on readily available models). Thanks to Windows Vista, they now have another purpose as well: ReadyBoost. Today we'll be taking a look at a budget solution from Toshiba: a 2GB drive costing no more than a few gallons of gas.
Toshiba's TransMemory USB 2.0 flash drive comes sealed in the retail blister pack shown above. Nothing fancy here.
The package includes the drive, neck strap, a couple label stickers, manual, CD, and a 36" USB A-B extension cable (handy if you don't have access to front ports). The CD contains PDFs of the manual in several languages and installation drivers if you're running Windows 98 (you're not, are you?). This is standard fare for most commercial drives but it's still nice to see extras, particularly since it sells for $22 at the time of writing.
The model itself is a slick white plastic with a silver plastic rim bisecting the middle. Front and back are shown above. It would have been nice if the rim/ring was metal as it would give it more durability, but I guess for the price you can't have it all. The front also has a blue activity LED near the cap.
The cap snaps onto the drive via a couple indentations on both sides. These grooves should prevent it from coming loose over time, as is the case with some drives. A gripe I usually have with flash drives is the lack of storage for said cap once it's plugged in. I know it doesn't sound like a big deal, but I've lost quite a few this way - I was simply in too much of a hurry and forgot where I put the cap. With Toshiba's drive, it loosely snaps onto the back (not nearly as tight as the front), which makes me question whether this was intentional or accidental. Either way it works.
Size-wise it's one of the smallest USB drives I've ever seen. Here it is compared to a much larger (albeit more durable) Corsair Voyager GT. It's a few mm shorter in length and about half as thick.
Because of this, it takes up surprisingly little room. Notice how small it appears next to a Buffalo Wireless-G USB Adapter. This is great because it'll prevent any space problems from neighboring devices (as a matter of fact, to the left of it below the wireless adapter is a USB mouse plug). When the drive is being accessed, the blue LED blinks. For testing I used HD Tach and ran the 8MB zones test with writing enabled. I also compared it to the only other USB drive currently in my possession, the Corsair Voyager GT (which also happens to be called the fastest drive in the world). The results are below.
