Portability - Part 4

When I started this series, I had only intended to do three episodes. But recently, I read an interesting article on portable USB hardware that I thought I should pass along. It concerns the speed of USB drives...which are the fastest, what size do you need, and which one you might consider buying. The article was written by Scott Dunn and appears on the Windows Secrets Web site.

If you don't wish to read it, let me do a quick recap for you and tell you a little about my experiences. As I mentioned in my first article, USB flash drives are not at fast as hard drives, which I find difficult to fathom as there are no moving parts. And as I continue to use my current flash drive, I've become more aware that speed is becoming an issue for me. Currently, I use a Lexar 2GB flash drive that I bought at Costco...and while I still have plenty of room on it right now, my use of the portable drive is getting more important all the time. So speed and size are something that I have been thinking about.

Something I didn't mention in my first article is that the bigger the drive, the slower the drive speed. Scott Dunn's article recommends using a 4GB drive that will give you a good balance between speed and storage capacity. Also, in reading this article and others, the same brands keep popping up as the fastest. One of the highest rated brands in all the articles I read is the Corsair Flash Voyager. Scott Dunn's article shows that an independent testing lab rates the Corsair 4 GB drive as having the fastest read speed at 33Mb per second.

So, using a testing program recommended in the same article, I decided to check out my Lexar drive. The test results show the Lexar read speed at only 16Mb per second. Now I really want a new drive. So, in doing a little research, I found the 4 Mb Corsair Flash Voyager on sale at NewEgg.com for only $19.99 with free shipping. Needless-to-say, I placed my order immediately. As a side note, I use NewEgg for many of my computer hardware purchases as they are reliable, fast, and usually offer some of the best pricing.

Another item covered in Scott Dunn's article which I didn't cover at all (but knew about) were USB drives that use U3 Smart Drive. In my research, I have seen a couple of portable software applications that require U3-equipped drives. If you wish to learn more about U3, you can go to Scott Dunn's article. But the bottom line is U3 should be a low priority in your choice of USB drives. I agree with him, which is why I didn't write about it earlier.

A second article by Mr. Dunn talks more in depth about software suites and applications designed for USB drives. I highly recommend you take a look at this one also. While I use the PortableApps Suite right now, I think I am going to try out the other application mentioned in his article called winPenPack. After all, I will shortly have an extra USB drive to play with. The article also has some good tips for safely using your USB drive on computers other than your own.