Product Requirements:
Device:
Win98/98SE/ME/2000/XP, Mac OS 8.6 or later, Linux 2.4.x
USB flash drives come in many shapes and sizes and with added features like cameras and mp3 players. These little gadgets are a great way to carry important files with you everywhere you go. Today I’ll be telling you about the Iomega Micro Mini USB 2.0 Drive that the fine folks at ThinkGeek sent me to review. Although this drive doesn’t have any of the special built in features mentioned above, it does have a few things going for it that set it apart from similar products.
First of all, it has a fitting name, as it is very small. With the rotating cover in the closed position, it is barely 1.5in in length and .75in wide.
The body of the drive is made of gray plastic with blue status LED embedded into the end. This LED blinks slowly while connected to the computer and faster when it is transferring data.
The rotating plastic cover is what makes this drive different than others. It actually comes with 3 covers of different colors: Blue, Gray and Orange. A small metal ring at the base of each cover allows for the included key chain to attach to it. Switching out the covers is not difficult at all. One bad thing though about this cover is the fact that it doesn’t snap in place. While there is a little friction, it basically can rotate freely. This isn’t a big deal, but sometimes when I would try to plug the drive into a tight USB port, I found that my grip would sometimes slip.
The drive is available in a 64MB and a 128MB version. It uses USB 2.0 which is a big plus, as it makes file transfers much speedier. I tested the Micro Mini with my PowerBook and various PCs. It worked flawlessly with the USB 2.0 machines and the USB 1.1 machines.
Below you will find the test results from copying a 38.5mb file to and from the
Micro Mini on a computer with USB 2.0 and one with 1.1 ports.
| Hard Drive to Micro Mini | Micro Mini to Hard Drive | |
| USB 2.0 | 58 seconds | 9 seconds |
| USB 1.1 | 1 min 16 seconds | 16 seconds |
The only thing that this drive is really missing is a write protect switch. If you don’t mind the lack of that feature, and need a very small drive, this one might be for you.
Price: $49.99 64MB, $69.99 128MB @ ThinkGeek
Pros:
Small size
Interchangeable covers
Cons:
No write protect switch
Cover doesn’t lock in place
Product Information
| Price: | 49.99 |
| Manufacturer: | Think Geek |
| Pros: |
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| Cons: |
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I saw it at Fry’s yesterday. It is incredibly small! It is shorter than my mini swiss army knife that I carry on my keychain.
Does it have password protection?
Nope, no password protection or write protection… Unless there are 3rd party password protection programs available.
I believe that on the included software you have the option to load the included software and the option to password protect the ammount of data that you wish to protect. Say, if you have a 128 MB drive, you can protect the quantity you want with a password and the rest can be accessed by anyone. This is handy if you borrow the memory to a friend so he/she can use it and you don’t have to worry about your password protected stuff.
YOP
estuardo:
Oops! I think you are right. There was an EXE file on the drive when I first loaded it. The name didn’t sound like anything I needed and I thought it might be some kind of ad for Iomega, so I just deleted it. I was on my MAC anyway and knew I wouldn’t be able to read it. Also the info that came with the drive didn’t mention anything about the software… Or maybe I accidently overlooked it… I tend NOT to read instructions 😉
Yeah, Iomega seems to always include an ad on their storage media.
No information about its transfer speed ? That’s important to buyers who need to transfer significantly big files.
The Micro Mini is USB 2.0, so it can transfer up to 480Mbits/second if your computer has USB 2.0 ports. I tested with my PowerBook which has USB 2.0, and it was fasssssssssssssst!
Hate to burst your bubble, but no flash media goes anywhere near 480Mbps ( or approx 50MBps ), USB2.0 or no USB2.0. At that speed, you could copy an entire 700MB CD in 14 seconds flat, which obviously doesn’t happen in real life, not even with a fast harddisk.
There’s the theoretical speed, and there’s the real speed. I am interested in the real speed. To test this, just copy a big file, say 50MB or more, to the drive, and time the transfer. Let us know the results in MB/s. FWIW, many good flash drives now do around 5-7 MBps write speed, and slightly higher read speed.
Thanks.
Ok, it took a little while, but I finally was able to get some time test results. I had given the drive to a friend and he had been on vacation. So take a look at the bottom of the review.