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| Kingston 5GB DataPak PC Card HDD & Reader |
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| Written by Mikhail Ivanenkov | |
| Saturday, 16 June 2007 | |
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The past few years in the PC market have produced some major improvements in all areas, with certain trends fading and coming back. But one such trend seems to continue unscathed: mobility. Particularly in the laptop realm, computers are not only getting faster and sleeker looking, but also smaller and more lightweight/portable. Nowadays the smaller notebooks are no thicker than an inch with Apple as the main proponent (and PC rivals like Sony), and with Shuttle's "creation" of the HTPC/SFF PC, powerhouse computers are finding their way to a smaller environment as well. All else follows: smaller monitors (LCDs), scanners, printers, whatever. And not necessarily because people have "so little room that they must buy the absolute smallest out there", but because it just looks plain cool.
Some companies have sought to bring down the cost by stacking smaller modules, but even so the price remains high. The solution to this mess is the mini HDD (IBM's smaller version is the Microdrive). The disk that Kingston offers, dubbed the DataPak, is somewhat of an oddity. Coming in at 1.8" it's not exactly a standard 3.5" HDD or a smaller 2.5" notebook part. Instead, it's small enough to be considered a Type II PCMCIA card (taking up only one of two slots offered with most laptops), while sporting either 2GB or 5GB of storage depending on the model. And it's several times cheaper than any USB drive can lay claim to, while comparable in speed. In addition to the actual HDD, Kingston also sent over a USB1.1 ATA reader. Strangely enough, the box claims it's a Flash card reader, with pictures of the different media types on the back, though no mention of support for the drive it's meant for. The reader doesn't look anything like what's on the box either, which leads me to believe that it's not a very widespread product and therefore stuck in a "generic" box that can store a variety of different readers. Both packages also have a "void if opened" sticker atop the cover, which is a bit strange to me. When ripped off, one of the two left a silvery streak of "VOID" words on the container. I assume this is only to keep people from getting refunds, though not exchanges for a faulty product. Especially since Kingston offers a 3 year warranty on the HDD and a 5 year warranty on the reader. Anyway, the drive is compatible Windows, MAC and Linux operating systems (I assume all versions because if plugged directly into a laptop, the drive is treated like a secondary internal HDD as opposed to a removable disk). Because of this it's truly plug & play, requiring no drivers regardless of the OS. The reader, on the other hand, may need drivers installed on Win98 or older (and concurrent MAC/Linux) versions.
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| Last Updated ( Saturday, 16 June 2007 ) |
