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Average customer rating: 4.5

Does the job, cheap and easy!
The age of "Star Trek" type storage is here

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CD Cyclone 256 MB Flash Key USB Pen Drive Storage Device

Manufacturer: CD Cyclone
Product Group: CE
Binding: Electronics
ASIN: B00007IFK2

Related Categories:

Audio & Video Accessories

256 MB

256 MB

Product Description

The Cyclone Flash Key transfers data instantaneously and recognizes immediately as another drive. It has no moving parts. Drop it into your pocket or toss it to a friend. The Cyclone Flash Key plugs into a standard USB port and requires no software. It is ideal for quickly transferring files from a laptop to a desktop or vice versa and is perfect for any file format.

Customer Reviews:

Does the job, cheap and easy!.......2004-08-01

I have an older (4 years) Dell 7500 laptop running Win 98. I wanted a flash drive to use as a cheap and easy way to do backup because I have no r/w drive. All my s/w is licensed so all I was really concerned about was backing up Word, Excel and email files. My main concern from researching many of these devices was price, durability and the ability to work with my older and slower USB port.

This product had a nice price point for the memory size, 256 meg. The 128 sized drives out there are about 40% cheaper than the 256's, but I think the doubled size is worth the extra $20-$30. The larger drives are at a premium right now with the 512 meg drives going for more than double the 256er's, and larger storage jumping even higher. It was not worth it to me. I'm sure in a year or two, even multi-gigabyte sized flash drives will be available for cheap, but I wanted it now.

Next, I was a little concerned about this brand; I'd never heard of CD Cyclone. I did a little research though, and they seemed like a reasonably dependable company.

Finally, some of the newer model flash drives gave me some concern about compatibility with my older system and USB ports.

Amazon had the best price when I factored in their free shipping program. The product arrived sooner than promised; the free shipping is supposed to take 6-9 business days and I got it in about 5 days overall.

The product comes in sparse packaging with minimal documentation, the drive itself, a necklace cord, and a USB cable. Nothing else like a CD. The drive looks pretty cool, and weighs next to nothing. I popped open the cap to check that there was SOMETHING inside. (There was!)

The documentation says that newer operating systems than mine will do plug-and-play, but Win98 required downloading a small file (a driver, I guess) and rebooting before the device will be recognized. After installing the file and rebooting, it was plug-and-play instantly.

Using the drive from that point was extremely easy. It showed up on My Computer as the "E" drive, and all I had to do was drag the files I wanted onto it. It took about 30 seconds to copy about 80 megs of files. It couldn't have been simpler. Later I took the Flash Drive to a friend's computer running Win 2000, popped the drive in a USB slot, and was instantly able to read my backed up files.

It feels good knowing that if my older laptop dies or the disc crashes, I've got my files safely backed up. This was cheap and easy peace of mind.

The age of "Star Trek" type storage is here.......2003-02-02

Specifications: Like most "USB ram drives" this device is the size of the average disposable lighter and about as heavy. The interface is USB version 1.1, which means that you can expect a transfer rate of about 1.5MB a second. The ram configuration is static, which means that you cannot upgrade the drive for greater memory capacity. The drive is plug n play for Windows ME, 2000 and XP only. Other operating systems will need a driver update.

Performance: Plugging this drive into the USB port of my computer, the drive was instantly recognized and installed. Within "MY COMPUTER" it was listed as a removable drive for ME, 2000 and XP. I have not tried any other OS.

There is no special formatting necessary to get the drive to work with Windows operating systems. These drives behave as any other hard drive. Files can be written and deleted with simple drag and drop actions. Copying enough files to fill the entire 256MB of this drive took about 5 minutes, as expected.

Quality and Fit: These drives are small enough to put into your pocket, and easy to misplace as well. All manufactures offer some way secure the device to a tether and wear around the neck or on a key chain. Unfortunately, the case these devices come in are often flimsy and will likely wear out and break eventually, exposing the ram and board inside to the elements. Additionally, The cap that protects the USB connector will likely be lost within a couple of weeks. Again, this exposes the device to the elements and limits the mobility characteristics.

This drive is small enough to fit into a USB interface without an additional cable extension, though one is provided. It is a tight fit when there is another USB device next to it though.

Other issues: Because not all computers have Windows ME and up installed on them, you will need to take the driver CD with you when you take your "ram drive" out to remote locations.

It is sometimes inconvienent to plug the ram drive into USB Ports on the back of a computer. A front USB port on a computer is a welcome site.

Because the drive uses the USB 1.1 interface, the read and write speed is limited. Other drives use the USB 2.0 standard and can read and write data much faster. Above 256 Megs this becomes relevant.

Other drives have the ability to change out multiple ram cards to make the USB drive truly flexible. Those drives tend to be twice the size however.

Pros and Cons:

Pros:

-Does everything it should do, and fills an important void in computer storage
-Very Small and convenient for transport
-USB interface available on most all computers made within the last 5 years
-All recent computers use ME and above for a OS (USB Plug N Play)
-About a million read/write operations before the ram fails

Cons:

-Small size makes it easy to lose
-Cost is still too high for mass adoption
-Need to carry around drivers for older or special OS
-Flimsy case will not likely last long
-Write times not as fast as USB 2.0 (1GB = 20 MIN)

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