Tiny ways to get around data overload

By MICHAEL FOREMAN

If your data files no longer fit on floppy disks or you are lugging a laptop around just to hold Powerpoint presentations, then it could be time to investigate a breed of lightweight storage devices that has just come on the market.

We tested the Ziv portable hard drive, a standard high-capacity notebook drive in a very light casing, and the FlashUSB drive, which stores smaller amounts of data in flash memory.

Both products were based on the now ubiquitous Universal Serial Bus (USB) interface, which not only offers a reasonably fast transfer rate of up to 1.5 megabytes a second but supplies power to both drives.

Once the drives are connected, files may be dragged and dropped to and from them just like a fixed drive, and as neither device requires batteries nor power supply, both offer high capacity in a very small and light housing.

The Ziv weighs 127g and measures 118mm x 72mm x 11 mm, and the FlashUSB drive is the size and weight of a packet of chewing gum.

Joseph Foote, at New Zealand distributor Thumbnail, says the Ziv drive is aimed at business travellers who want to carry all their data around with them, but are able to use a PC at their destination to work with it.

Thumbnail is offering Zivs in three sizes. The largest is a 30Gb model, which sells for $1100, and 20Gb and 10Gb versions are also available, costing $717 and $660 respectively.

You can also - for $160 - buy a Ziv case alone, which could be used to accommodate your existing laptop drive after you have upgraded it.

For example, if your present laptop drive has a capacity of say 10Gb, you could replace it with a higher capacity and get a cheap 10Gb portable device into the bargain.

The Ziv comes in an aluminium case, which is available in a range of colours, and each comes with a metal chain connected to a crocodile clip.

The manufacturer's website says the clip is to prevent the build-up of static electricity - but it also allows geeks to wear the devices on their clothes.

Compared with the Ziv drive, the 16Mb capacity of the FlashUSB drive we tested seemed measly.

But even this, the bottom of the range size costing $169 plus GST, represents the equivalent of 11 floppy disks, and larger sizes are available up to 1Gb.

Mr Foote says the FlashUSB drives, which weigh only 10g, have already proved popular with tech-support people, who carry a lot of small files like drivers around with them all the time.

The Flash USBDrive includes a write protection switch similar to a floppy.

A further refinement is bundled password protection software to prevent unauthorised access to your data should you lose the drive.

Overall, we found that these products worked pretty much as they were intended, although the USB interface seemed a bit slow for transferring data in quantities over a gigabyte,

Links

Thumbnail data systems

USB Drives

Ziv portable hard drive