How not to lose data, pictures and your reviews: Use the PNY Attache Flash Drive.
Written: May 13 '04
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Product Rating:
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Pros: A small unit that is easy to work and is great for the home user.
Cons: 64 MB is not enough for people who write a lot!
The Bottom Line: This works for me but it won't be enough memory or fast enough for many.
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| jo.com's Full Review: PNY Attache 64 MB USB 1.1 Flash Drive |
I hadn’t a clue as to what a flash drive was 6 months ago. When my daughter was here and she heard how ill my computer sounded she understood why I was afraid it was going to go to computer heaven and I would lose everything on my hard drive. She went with me to Staples and I bought the PNY Attaché USB 1.1 Flash Drive.
What is a flash drive:
Simply put mine is a tiny 4” by ½” unit. It is a part metal, part plastic gizmo that allows me to take all my data from my computer and transfers it to this tiny little thing. It has a long blue cord so if I wanted I could just put it around my neck and save data to it. I can then take the unit to another computer and have my material on it. I can throw it into my pocketbook - it is truly portable and worrying about having the wrong disc with me is a thing of the past.
It will transfer data, music and images from one PC to another. It is essentially a storage device. You can literally take the flash drive with you to work and plug it into your computer there. You then have all your data with you and it is small enough that most won’t even know it is there! It also weighs less than 15 grams so it is very lightweight.
The package contents include:
~Attaché drive
~Driver CD (I needed to download software which I will explain in a moment. This is needed on Windows operating systems 98/98SE. If my husband were using this with his laptop and 2000 Windows he would not have needed a driver.)
~3 foot USB Cable
~Lanyard
How it is used- the essential information and my experiences:
I decided on the 64MB flash drive. Which one you will buy will depend on how much data you either will be transferring to another PC or how much you save on a daily basis. What happens with this is it becomes another drive. It shows up when I click “save as” as the e drive. I save information to a disc, to my hard drive and now to e. I always back my data on this drive.
The first thing I did was plug it into the USB port in the back of my computer. The cable is long enough that it was very easy to just reach back and plug it in. I didn’t have to move anything. My primary focus for buying this was to get my data into a safe place in case my computer crashed for good.
I can help you out with what size you might want to buy by telling you why I bought 64 MB and what happened. It costs about $35. I could have bought 128 MB for $70. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to spend $70 I didn’t think I needed it. I also realized that if 64 MB wasn’t enough I could buy another one. That is not the best way to go and if I were going to do it over again I would buy 128 MB. I have thousands of documents, pictures and about 20 pages of my personal website. I used up 64 MB quickly. I transferred only about 1/4 of my documents onto the PNY Flash before it told me it was full.
I am lucky because we have a second computer in our house. I connected the Flash easily to the other computer and transferred the data to the laptop. That freed the 1.1 Flash Drive so I could go ahead and transfer more. It took about 15 minutes each time I transferred all that data from the Drive to the laptop and every time I did that I disrupted my husband’s work. It would have been easier if I had spent more money and gotten more memory – even more than 128 just to be on the safe side. Once I transferred everything, which was about 4 months ago, I haven’t had a full Flash. But the initial transfer was a major one and I feel as if any day now it will tell me it is full and I’ll transfer it again. 256 MB only costs $90 so it’s worth the jump from 128 MB to 256 MB in my opinion. 32 MB, 512 MB and 1GB are also available.
Installing the driver was simple. I just inserted the driver CD disc into my CD-ROM and followed the directions. It was one of the smoothest and easiest installations I’ve come across. Remember that if you are using Windows 2000/ME/XP; MacOS 9.x /Linux Kernal 2.4.x you will not have a driver installation. Your computer will automatically detect the Flash.
The Attaché’s LED flashes when data is being put on it. Don’t unplug the Attaché while it is being used or you will lose the data! It also can be affected by a virus as any part of your computer. You can protect it just as you do your hard drive. We are told that there is a switch built in that protects it from a virus attack but I still use a separate virus protection program. The PNY also has a write protect switch, which we are told prevents accidental erasing, or overwriting data.
This unit lists 1.1MB/s as the write time and 700MB/s as the read time. This is certainly not the fastest on the market and that might be an issue when you go to buy. We are told that it will "achieve blazing speeds of 12Mb/sec with USB 1.1." It took about 3 seconds to transfer this 2000 word file to the Flash.
There is a small cap that matches the metal of the Attaché. I don’t use it because I don’t carry this around with me. In spite of it having a cap we are warned not to expose the Attaché to dirt, moisture, water or fluids of any kind. It also should not be exposed to direct sunlight, excessive humidity, corrosive environments strong static electricity or magnetic fields.
Other information:
My cable is so long I can bring it all around my computer table and have the unit next to me so it is easy to see. There is also an LED charging indicator that flashes green.
The lanyard is 17" long and as I said is blue. It attaches to the unit with a ring, which goes right through the unit. You can wear it or even use the ring to clip it to a key chain. I don’t use this particular feature but many do and if you do this is a decent lanyard.
There is a 1-year limited warranty on this product.
Established in 1985, PNY Technologies, Inc. delivers a full spectrum of high-quality products for everything in and around the computer. PNY is a leading manufacturer and supplier of computer graphics accelerator cards for consumers and workstation graphics boards for professionals, memory upgrade modules, Flash Media and Flash peripherals. PNY products are used by a number of Fortune 500 OEM customers for applications that range from high-end computing and Internet/telecommunications infrastructure equipment to desktop, notebook and network servers. The company's retail product line includes products used in a growing number of consumer electronics devices, such as personal computers, digital cameras and PDA devices. (www.pny.com)
Jo’s Final Thoughts:
At $35.00 perhaps even less since you can find a rebates, this is priced well. It is fine for my use. In spite of the time it took to initially transfer all my data (an hour!) I now feel secure that my documents are being backed up on an external drive so when my computer no longer works I won’t have to attempt to find documents on a hundred discs! If you are moving this from computer to computer and need to transfer a lot of material very quickly you will want an upgrade. For the regular home user however, the PNY Attaché will be fine, though, I would recommend more memory.
This is my entry into CaptainD's Challenge Yourself Write Off.
If I have left anything crucial out let me know!
Recommended:
Yes
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