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Here's the scenario: You need to bring an old 100MB patch file to a friend's place to patch his favorite shooter. For whatever reason, the game publisher no longer supports Daikatana, and the patch download is no longer available. You had tried emailing it, but his mail server rejects it by telling you you're an idiot for trying to shove a 100MB file down its throat. You have some possible solutions…
A Zip disk. Problem is, he does not have a Zip drive, and yours is an internal IDE. Sure, you can go through the hassle of removing and bringing it over, but you're not that good a friend.
You can burn it on CD, since everyone has a CD drive, but being cheap, you don't feel like blowing the 0.30$ on the blank media. Your pr0n and MP3 backups need all the CDs you got. Besides, you got to ride your sister's bike there (the one that has the Barbie stickers), and your pockets can't hold a CD jewel case. You'll already be fighting off an angry mob that want to kick your ass for riding that bike, so forget about holding the CD in your hands.
You proceed to break up the patch file into 1.44MB chunks and start writing them to floppy. You can explain the huge bulge in your pockets to that same mob that will pull you off the Barbie bike because the floppies in your pockets wouldn't allow you to peddle fast enough.
Using the real-life scenario above (real-life if your name is Mr. Bean), you can see that we've gotten ourselves into quite a dilemma. There is a way out of this and help you avoid the beating of a lifetime.
Having already reviewed the Trek flash drive previously, I must say that these gadgets are quite useful. Today, we'll be looking at a .
Specifications
O/S Support
Win ME/2000/XP
Win 98/SE with driver support
Mac OS 8.6, 9.1, 9.2 and above
Performance
Interface Speed
USB Full Speed Interface (Maximum Transfer): up to 12Mb/s
Read/Write Speed
Sequential Read: 950KB/s (Max)
Sequential Write: 925KB/s (Max)
Compliance
USB v2.0 Specification Mass Storage Compliant
USB Full Speed Certified
There is nothing terribly remarkable about the packaging. If you've purchased Crucial products before, then you're already familiar with their plain brown, cardboard boxes. Inside, you'll find the flash drive, a USB extension cable, and a small strap to carry the drive around.
The Crucial Gizmo! is a 128MB flash drive. As the description implies, the capacity is roughly 128MB, and the technology used for storage is flash memory. There are no moving parts, and any Windows OS after 98 will support it without drivers.
Originally, the website stated in no small words that the drive was a USB 2.0 drive. Although the drive is USB 2.0 compliant, it is no speedier than non-USB 2.0 compliant drives.
The drive is in fact a USB 1.1 device that will operate in USB 2.0 ports. We will do the tests to confirm, but this was a bit of a let down. During the course of the review, the information has been updated on their site to reflect this finding.
Update: Crucial did drop us a line explaining the USB implementation a little further. Here's what they had to say:
When Crucial introduced the Crucial Gizmo! USB flash drive we received a lot of questions from customers and the media about Universal Serial Bus (USB) speeds. People wanted to know if our Gizmo! drives are considered Hi-speed, Full-speed, USB 2.0, or 1.1. A closer look at USB revealed that nearly every company offering USB-compatible devices uses different nomenclature to describe their products. This can make shopping for USB devices really confusing.
For further understanding, Crucial went straight to the source, the USB Implementers Forum, Inc. a non-profit corporation founded by the group of companies that developed the Universal Serial Bus specification. We took what we learned and .
The article does clear a few things up and it's worth a read.
The USB cord is pretty useful in situations where it can be an inconvenience to reach to the back of your case. In my case, I wanted the cord to reach the top of my desk but the problem here is the cord is only about two feet long, so it wasn't long enough.
I'd imagine the cord will be good for those of you who only have rear mounted USB ports, and want a connection closer to the front of the PC.
Security
The Crucial Gizmo! comes with Secure-D software, where the installation is on the drive itself. This software allows you to setup public and private zones on the drive, so you can keep your "interesting" pictures in the private zone and password protect it.
Next Page - Testing and Conclusions
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Crucial Gizmo! 128MB USB Flash Drive: Not many of us use floppies anymore, but there are times when you need to transport some small files from one place to another. A flash drive is perfect for these scenarios.
