USB Flash Drives are handy to have around; but are they all created equal? I’m not talking about just quality or ruggedness here, but more particularly speed and other features.
Here are two different USB Flash Drives in my drawer:
This Kingston DataTraveler Elite is quite pricey, primarily because it comes with software to make this a high privacy, secure data transport device. Now, I personally wouldn’t pay a bunch for this feature because there are other programs, some free, to help you do this as well.
But if you click on the picture and look at the product specs, you will see that this unit is capable of data transfer rates of 24MBps (Mega Bytes per second) reading and 14MBps writing.
Contrast that with this less expensive Kingston DataTraveler. In the description you will see that this unit is also USB 2.0, but rated at only 3MBps while writing data.
Now, speed isn’t always everything. I would suspect, in part because the warranty is 5 years on both, that each unit is as reliable as the other for keeping your data. But if read/write speed might be an issue for you, note the specs and buy accordingly.
Don’t pay for features you don’t need or won’t use. But if you will use them, it’s nice to know what to look for and how much you are paying for that feature.
If inexpensive (as opposed to “cheap”) is your criteria, then look at the standard DataTraveler. When it was recently featured as a weekly special from Buy.com, you could get 2 of them for about $5 after rebate.
