It was past time for a new USB Flash/Thumbdrive
Posted By RichC on August 6, 2009
I’ve been thinking about buying a new USB ThumbDrive/FlashDrive for some time now, primarily for backups, transfer and storage when a Buy.com email hit my inbox and triggered my impulse purchase — 64GB Kingston DataTraveler.
A few years ago when I was traveling more often, I purchase my first and only ThumbDrive which has served me well (and my son in school too). At the time, a 1 GB USB ThumbDrive was unheard of … and I even had to order it direct from Hong Kong. Of course now a 1GB is laughable, but back then it cost me over $300! (I’m not laughing) 
Fast forward to 2009 and memory is far less expensive, making small flash memory cards (took two 16GB SD cards on our recent trip) and USB drives give-a-way items, especially smaller ones. Of course I wanted a bigger ThumbDrive in order to transfer larger files, video or to back up more secure data with encryption (I’m storing a Truecrypt directory). The less than $130 price point made the memory drive attractive and considering my son heads back to college in a couple weeks with my USB007 drive, I figure it was a good time to upgrade.
Unfortunately the Kingston 64GB FlashDrive can’t be used as Microsoft Windows “Readyboost” memory — but then that wasn’t the purpose. Real life transfer speeds seem a bit slow, but calculations show 29MB/second
moving files from the Kingston DataTraveler 200 ThumbDrive to my Window 7 RC notebooks computer’s hard drive and 13MB/sec transferring data from the computer to the ThumbDrive (the Apple Macintosh was about the same, although I didn’t time it). I’m sure I’ll be kicking myself in a few months as flash memory continues to drop, but then again hyper-inflation could make my purchase a deal? (listen to Peter Schiff speaking about 2009-2010 US Hyperinflation — MP3 audio)
😯
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