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Put It in Your Pocket

Easily the most convenient way to transport files from place to place, featherweight, key chain-size devices come in capacities as large as 2GB in solid-state (no moving parts) memory systems that are not much bigger than one or two packs of gum. Most are reasonably sturdy and effortless to use--just plug them in, wait a few seconds for a driver to load, and they're ready to take your files.

These pocketable drives are most appropriate if your capacity requirements top out at 512MB. They can hold important documents, hundreds of digital photos, or hours of MP3s. If you need more space, though, these devices get prohibitively expensive: Prices for the models we looked at range from a modest $80 for a 128MB drive to $165 for a 256MB unit; but a key chain-size 2GB flash memory drive costs $1300, more than four times the cost of a 512MB model. That high cost alone is reason enough not to spring for a 2GB device--which you could lose as easily as you might misplace your keys.

Three products we tested, from Kanguru Solutions, M-Systems, and TrekStor USA, use on-board flash memory. But the other two models we evaluated rely solely on removable flash media cards: Our Best Buy, the SanDisk Cruzer, handles MultiMediaCard and Secure Digital, and the Lexar Media JumpDrive Trio supports Memory Stick, MMC, and SD.

Removable flash media has several advantages. You can share the cards with a compatible digital camera or PDA, and you can easily supplement your capacity with new cards as needed, at about half what you'd pay for an additional, solid-state memory drive of comparable capacity. On the other hand, you have to take care not to misplace the tiny media cards.

The Cruzer, priced at $85 and equipped with a 256MB SD card, is one of the best values in this roundup despite being slightly larger than the other devices we tested. (It measures about 0.75 inch across, so it may not fit in the space allotted for USB ports on some desktop systems, in which case you'll have to use the included USB 1.1 extension cable to connect the drive to your PC.) Unlike other devices, which cover their USB connectors with an easy-to-misplace cap, the Cruzer has a nifty retractable connector.

Although Lexar Media's JumpDrive Trio ($80 with a 128MB Memory Stick, $20 without memory) has a more tapered form than the SanDisk Cruzer and supports three media types, we liked it the least of the five products we tested. For one, you have to open a flimsy, poorly designed flap to insert your media into the JumpDrive Trio, and then close the flap behind the card. Furthermore, the device was the slowest writer we tested, though it finished third in reading among the models in its category.

Kanguru Solutions' KanguruMicro Drive+ ($130) sports an SD slot in addition to its 256MB of integrated memory. With an SD card inserted, the Kanguru displays two logical drives within Windows, one for the built-in memory and one for the card. This USB 1.1 device was about 12 percent slower than the Cruzer at writing our 120MB test file, though, and it was slowest at reading that same file.

The dedicated flash memory drives we evaluated--M-Systems' DiskOnKey Classic 2.0 and TrekStor USA's ThumbDrive 2 Smart--have a few things in common. Both devices are bootable (if your BIOS supports booting from a USB device), and both offer free software that lets you add password-protected, resizable partitions.

The DiskOnKey ($165 with 256MB of storage space) uses an on-board ARM7 CPU to accelerate transfers impressively: It took less than one-fourth as long as its closest competitor, the Cruzer, to complete our write test, and about one-third as long as the next-fastest drive, the ThumbDrive 2, to speed through our read test.

By contrast, the tiny ThumbDrive 2 Smart ($100 for 128MB) took six and a half times longer than the DiskOnKey to complete our write tests. Despite being billed as a USB 2.0 device, the model we tested is merely a USB 1.1 drive that works--as all USB 1.1 devices do--under USB 2.0 at standard 1.1 speed. By early fall, TrekStor USA plans to release an updated ThumbDrive with enhanced electronics that should boost performance. TrekStor sells this ThumbDrive model directly; Memorex markets the same ThumbDrive as a USB 1.1 drive.