It’s hard to imaging a portable device today without some sort of flash memory. They are ubiquitous among technology consumers, and enthusiasts use them to transport files between home and work. Now “portable apps” are starting to emerge, whereas you can run an all-inclusive program from a flash device on any PC. All the configuration is kept on the portable device: no InstallShield, no registry, no “DLL hell”.
Verbatim has released their Store’n’Go Hard Drive which aspires to be more than a traditional portable drive. This device allows you to run applications directly, without installing on the host machine. You can even browse directly from it, preventing all temporary internet files (including favorites, history, etc) from even touching the host computer.
Overview
- 4GB of storage space with built-in USB 2.0 connectivity
- Pre-loaded with Mobile Launchpad, the “start” menu for your USB HD 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
- Product Number : 95129
- Capacity/Speed : 4GB
Technology
The hard drive drive itself is essentially an IBM microdrive cushioned inside a plastic shell, and has the benefit of being extremely light. Such as ants do not fall to their deaths from a 2-story drop, this drive isn’t susceptible to gravity’s cruel laws like traditional hard drives. Unfortunately, it is not solid state, so an accidental wash cycle will destroy this drive, whereas a traditional flash stick could survive.
Flash memory can have only so many writes, so is intended not to change very much. Since it’s solid state, they can take an accidental wash cycle. Flash memory chips are called “flash” because in order to write to it, the memory is loaded, and then a signal is sent to the memory circuitry that says “remember this”. Once the memory has been “flashed”, power can be completely removed and the memory will retain whatever was written to it.
The “problem” is that memory can be flashed only so many times. I’m finding numbers between 10,000 and 100,000 times – though as with anything, I’m sure that is increasing over time as well. Regardless, there is a limit. When that limit is approached, some portion of the memory may not properly remember what was written to it, resulting in corruption. It may only take a single bit of information to be wrong, or to “wear out”, for the entire contents of a flash memory chip to be lost.
Frequent access can shorten the life of flash drives, but they have been known to survive the occasional wash cycle. Just dry it out and it works good as new! Lexar has created a program “PowerToGo” that claims it can make any windows application portable. I would love to be able to have all of Photoshop CS2 on a flash drive (along with all my plugins)!
The USB dongle can be a bit of a pain, and it is a bit bulkier than a USB memory stick, so it’s not like you can keep it on your keychain.
Testing
The Verbatim Store’n’Go USB HD was tested on a Dell Inspiron 8500 laptop, as this device will most likely be used in conjunction with a laptop. We ran our tests using HD Tach version 3.0 and compared several different storage devices, all using the same powered USB Hub.
- Pentium 4 Mobile 2.4Ghz
- USB 2.0 powered hub
- 1GB single-channel DDR RAM
- 60GB laptop hard drive (4200 RPM)
- nVidia GeForce4 Go integrated graphics card
| Media | Burst | random access (ms) | Avg. MB | CPU % |
| 60GB laptop HDD | 83.9 | 20.2ms | 23.3 MB | 4% |
| Sandisk Cruzer 1GB | 10.6 | 17.4ms | 10.0 MB | 14% |
| Vantec Nexstar 120GB USB | 25.1 | 14.7ms | 23.7 MB | 18% |
| Verbatim Store’n’Go 4GB HDD | 12.2 | 37.4ms | 7.6MB | 8% |
| External USB Hard Drive | Sandisk Cruzer 1GB |
| Internal 60GB HDD | Verbatim Store’n’Go 4GB |
The Vantec Store’n’Go HD is the worst-performing device. It edges slightly ahead in the burst speed and CPU utilization, but in real-world use the drive has nearly double the random access speed and half the throughput. Since the device is an actual hard drive, the data output varies depending on its physical location on the platter. At best you can expect 7.6MB a second, and at its worst the drive serves up 5MB a second.
The Verbatim Store’n’Go portable USB drive is a mixed bag, depending on what you use it for. As a storage medium, it is very slow compared to static flash devices. It has takes nearly twice as long to access the data, and at its best is still slower than an average flash drive. At its worst, it performs at nearly half the speed of a flash drive.
The silver bullet of this little device is its Ceedo integration. You can install self-contained programs right to the device that will run on any modern Windows PC without re-installation. This can be very handy for IT professionals or technology enthusiasts that need all their common utilities on one hot-pluggable device. Privacy nuts will like that all of their internet browsing cache and history settings can be kept on the device, leaving your work PC clean as a whistle.
Frequent access can shorten a flash drive’s life, so if this is a concern for you, deal with the slow speed and stick with Verbatim’s hard-disk-based solution.
The Verbatim’s Store’n’Go has functionality that blows the doors off of a regular flash drive, despite the lack of performance. If you can find a solid-state flash drive with Ceedo installed, then you can have speed as well as functionality.
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