Flash drives have been getting larger and larger, and our need for portable storage is only getting greater. It wasn’t long ago that we reviewed Verbatim’s 2GB U3 flash drive, and we thought that was plenty of space for all of our portable data needs… but we quickly found ourselves starving for more data. I never really liked to use more than 1GB of data, because you never know when you’re going to need that extra space…
U3 drives are really neat in that you can install “portable applications”, in which everything the program needs to run is contained within the flash drive. No registry settings, no dependencies on shared resources or the presence of “My Documents”. Even thought there’s only a handful of really “useful” portable applications, it’s very easy to use up 1GB of your flash drive with these essenetials… so the once large 2GB flash drive no loner does the trick.
So large 2GB flash drives no longer do the trick, and although there are 8GB flash drives available, they are very expensive. Enter Verbatim’s 12GB Store ‘n’ Go USB Hard Drive. It is just slightly larger than a normal USB flash drive, is very light, and provides four more Gigabytes than the largest NAND flash device. Embedded on the device is Ceedo, a portable applications manager that works much like U3, although applications must be written for Ceedo: U3 and Ceedo applications are not compatible with each other.
The Verbatim Store ‘n’ Go drive is slightly larger than a traditional USB flash drive. It is enclosed in glossy white plastic and embellished with a deep blue button with the Verbatim logo. The button is purely aesthetic and serves no function. There is a small dual-color LED on the bottom of the drive which displays the power and read activity. The LED turns blue when powered on and flashes orange when there is drive activity.
A small USB plug is tucked into the enclosure and is flipped up similar to a pocket knife accessory. The USB port can be rotated over 180 degrees, so there should be little concern of the device fitting on your computer’s back panel. I’m glad to see the USB connector is integrated to the unit and not a cable with a dongle, a huge improvement over Verbatim’s 4GB Store’n’Go HDD. Also included in the package is a USB extetion cable, just in case you need it, a white vinyl carrying case with belt strap, and a simple manual.
- 12GB of storage space with built-in USB 2.0 connectivity
- Pre-loaded with Mobile Launchpad, the “start” menu for your USB HD Drive
- Auto-synchronize* between computer(s) and USB drive
- Sleek and compact design, convenient for carrying and transporting files
- Ease of use. Same Plug and Play operation as a USB drive – no external power required
- One Year Limited Warranty
It’s not really a true “hard drive” according to Cornice, the inventor of the internal “storage element”, but has a spinning platter and heads just like a hard drive, and is IDE compatible, just like a hard drive. Because it has moving parts, Cornice has implemented features to make the storage element very rugged, as it is prone to many more drops, shocks, and movement.that a traditional hard drive will never encounter.
The differences between U3 and Ceedo
Ceedo is embedded on the 12GB Store’n’ Go, which is a portable applications manager similar to the more popular U3 system. Both have their own Start Menus (which are located on the right side of your taskbar) and are automatically launched when the device is inserted. The launcher application has a startup file that Windows knows to look for, which points to the launcher. If the launcher fails to start, you can run it manually.
U3 and Ceedo are very similar, but there are some minor differences in how they work. U3 divides the USB drive into two dynamic partitions, one for embedded apps and the other for data. Installed U3 applications are hidden on the system partition. While this prevents users from accidentally deleting files, you also can’t browse them, either. You may not have any data on the data partition, but only 500MB free if you have a lot of programs installed.
Ceedo implements a different strategy, and only uses one drive letter. Alll portable Ceedo applications are installed under the “Ceedo” directory on the root of the drive. Ceedo also has another nifty feature: the ability to make Internet Explorer portable (regardless of the version).
While IE cannot be “installed” onto the device, Ceedo can capture all cookies, bookmarks, cache, and any other files that would leave a footprint on the host computer, and even cleans up these files upon eject. This can be a very handy feature for system administrators, people who want to keep a central “Favorites” list, or anyone else that doesn’t want traces of their browsing habits left behind. Of course, if you’re a Firefox user, then you are probably more interested in Portable Firefox, although version 1.5 is the latest “portable” version at the time of this writing.
Even though U3 and Ceedo applications are not compatible with other, many popular applications are available for both. Open organizations have even created “independent” portable applications, which are architechted in such a way to eliminate dependency on a host Operating System. The drawback to these “open portable apps” is that you must navigate to them manually and run them; they are not recognized by U3 or Ceedo’s management utilities, which basically include recognized apps in their own quick-launch menus. One of the more robust and popular of these open applications is OpenOffice, which is a completely portable Office Suite that is completely compatible with Microsoft Office, but leaves no footprint on the host computer.
These features are all well and good, but I’m interested to see how this unit performs, as Verbatim’s 4B Store ‘n’ Go HDD was less than stellar. The performance was so bad that I have been using a 2GB flash drive over the 4GB Store’n’Go.
All units were tested on a Dell Inspiron 8500 Laptop Computer, which has a Pentium 4 2.5GHz processor, 1GB DDR RAM, GeForce 4 Go video card, and 60GB Hitachi HDD running Windows XP Service Pack 2. We tested the new Store’n’Go against its sibling, the Verbatim U3 Store’n’Go 2GB drive, which is a true NAND flash memory unit and has excellent performance. We also tested against the laptop’s internal hard drive just to compare throughput.
Verbatim’s new 12GB unit can achieve higher burst speeds than other flash-based devices, and higher average read performance than all but the fastest flash units. The random access speed is reasonably fast: almost as fast as the laptop’s own hard drive.
Verbatim Store’n’Go 12GB USB HDD
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Conclusion
I was surprised that the new Verbatim Store’n’Go 12GB HDD unit performs about the same as well as a flash memory unit. This is probably due to the higher data density of the Cornice storage medium, which is able to achieve and surpass the throughput of flash-based units. The random access speed is a slight factor, however, as portable applications feel slower than the 2GB flash unit, but still very usable. The throughput varies slightly, but is just as just as fast, and sometimes faster, than other flash-based devices. You get 12GB of portable storage for less than the price of a 8GB flash drive without really compromising performance.
This 12GB device is sure to cause Flash Envy among your friends.
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