There are alot of flash drives available today with several different features. Some focus on portable applications, others on speed, or even ultra-portability. While some of these units have some nifty features, it doesn’t do any good it you don’t have it with you. Many flash drives come with a lanyard, but let’s face it: for most people hanging a lanyard around your neck isn’t a daily ritual.
This is where the ultra-portable flash drives come in. They are so small that you can attach them to things you have with you every day; like your wallet or keychain. A-Data has developed an incredibly small and innovative flash drive that has everything most people need you need (and nothing you don’t).
Description
A-DATA’s PD 17 features stylish design and a loss-proof sliding design cap that eliminates the problem of easily-lost caps that is ideal for today’s busy lifestyles. It combines plug-and-play convenience and key-chain style design with elegance and smooth lines. The fashion concept is taken a step further by making PD 17 available in three different colors: champagne gold, elegant red and bright blue.
The blend of exquisite, innovative design that emphasizes simplicity and smooth lines with slim, lightweight construction makes the device a data storage product with a unique style. PD 17 takes hi-tech and fashion to new levels in terms of both visual appearance and functionality, adding an extra touch of minimalist charm to the user’s modern lifestyle.
Features
- Tiny
- Push and Play
- COB process for PCBA
- Enhanced for Windows ReadyBoost
- Specification: support USB 2.0
- Size 36.5*24.5*5.5mm
- Weight:5g
The PD17 is easily one of the smallest USB drives available. Not only is it just slightly smaller than a standard SD card, it is also very slim and compact (about as thick as two or three SD cards)
The unit’s case is made from molded plastic and is available in blue, red and orange (tastefully called champagne gold), and has a metalic rim. The rim has a loop integrated into it, which functions as a keyring attachment. On one side is a ridged black push lever that expands and retracts the embedded USB 2.0 connector. The connector itself has four copper connections and slides into the hollow portion of a standard USB port (rather than using a traditional plug that surrounds the entire port). The absense of the metal part of the connector means that you could potentiall insert the device upside-down, but there is no harm in this.
Testing
The flash drive was tested against another standard USB drive of the same capacity: Corsair’s Padlock 2GB Drive. There are other USB drives in the OCMS labs, but have different performance levels, and would be an unfair comparison. These drives were benchmarked on a test PC with the following components:
- Intel E6600 Core 2 Duo CPU
- Asus P5W Deluxe Motherboard (Intel 975 chipset)
- Soundblaster X-Fi Platinum sound card
- eVGA 8800 GTS 320MB PCI-e video card
- 2GB Curcial Ballistix Tracer DDR2-800 memory
- Windows Vista Ultimate
Read performance was measured using SimpliSoftware’s HDTach. Write performance can be measured artificially, but we wanted a real-world scenario, so we copied several files of varying sizes and measured the time taken to copy. Each measurement was taken twice to verify that caching was not affecting the write performance.
A-Data PD17 2GB Flash Drive Performance
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The A-Data PD17 drive had slightly better read performance than Corsair’s drive, but slightly less write performance. The read performance is close to a laptop hard drive, so running applications or streaming video is not a problem.
Copying several gigabytes of data to any flash drive is often painful, taking over 10 minutes in most cases, so the extra 10 seconds really isn’t going to matter. Quick copies of up to a few hundred megabytes doesn’t take that long, however. The write performance of both these drives is adequate for portable applications like OpenOffice and Firefox.
Finally there’s a portable flash drive that understands what portability is all about. The A-Data PD17 series is small enough to fit on a keychain without noticing it, let has a decent capacity for average data transport. It is not ruggedized, but appears solid enough to handle standard wear and tear. This unit begs to be put on a keychain, so a little extra protection would have been nice.
A-data even backs up their PD17 with a lifetime guarantee, so you can be confident that you’ll be taken care of if the drive does break or fail.
Even for being so small, it has the fastest read speed I’ve tested in an “average” consumer drive. Although the write speed is slightly slower than other fast USB drives, it is adequate for portable applications. This unit is more suited to keeping crucial data at hand rather than heavy transport, as it will still take 15 minutes or so to fill it up. Priced at around $20 this unit is cheap enough to be an impulse buy, because once you’re used to having a USB drive this handy you’ll never be without one again.
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