Buying the best flash disk in the Indian Market and Pen Drive Related Problems

INCOMPLETE

Focus of the post : -

• This post gives an idea of the performance of value flash disks whose performance specifications arent declared by the manufacturer.

• Partitioning a pendrive
• Protecting Data
  
• Booting from pendrive
• Best Portable HDD and Recovering Partitions.
  

1.Corsair - Corsair Flash Voyager is a water resistance drive enclosed in rubber housing.

1.1 Corsair Flash Voyager 4GB

1.2 Corsair Flash Voyager 8GB

2.PNY - PNY offers some excellent slim drives with good performance.I bought 4GB Micro Attache from Ebay,the drive stopped working the same day.I replaced it with a new drive the next day.The new pendrive was slightly different from the original.The Ebay pendrive was replaced by Fortune Marketing and the new pen drive was detected as 0 but had a serial no. in registry,the Ebay pendrive was detected as USBest USB2Flash Storage.The Ebay pendrive(navkarIT) was slow and the dimensions were misprinted as 30x12x21 mm in place of 30x12x2.1mm .Another difference that was visible on the new drive was different circuitry and the presence of two golden dots near the name PNY at the back side.Generally slim pendrives are very slow but the PNY drives offered better than acceptable performance and comes with a 5 year warranty .There are three slim drives available from PNY:-

• Micro Attache - 30 x12 x 2.1mm (little bigger than a simcard)
  
• Sliding Attache - 35 x 15 x 4mm , 50 x 15 x 4mm(open)
• Metro Attache -

In contrast ,the Kingston Mini Slim has dimensions of 38.85 x 16.4 x 6.44 mm and comes with a warranty of 2yrs.Write speeds are good though.

2.1 PNY Micro Attache 4GB

2.2 PNY Micro Attache 4GB - USBest USB2Flash Storage(bought from EBAY)

3.Kingston

Kingston Flash disk Comparison >> OLD >>

3.1 Kingston DataTraveller 2GB Lime

3.2 Kingston DataTraveller 4GB Purple

3.3 Kingston DataTraveller Generation2 (G2) - 4GB - Yellow.Official :-10MB/sec read, 5MB/sec write (Extremely slow drive)

4.Transcend

4.1 Transcend JetFlash 110 8GB

4.2 Transcend Jetflash v33 2GB

5.Sandisk

5.1 Sandisk Cruzer Micro 1GB (Black,Retractable Model)

6.Moserbaer

6.1 Moserbaer 1GB

7.Amkette

7.1 Amkette Spectra Pro 4GB

8.HP - HP slim drives are manufactured by PNY and comes with 2yr warranty.Both PNY and HP are distributed by Fortune Marketing.HP drives are also slower than PNY.


8.1 HP Slim v155w

32mb blocks

8.2 HP v165w

8Mb blocks

32MB Blocks

Official Specs - 2G,4G(4MB-Write,20MB-Read),8G,16G(8MB-Write,25MB-Read)

All tests 8mb blocks unless mentioned

Personal Choice - Corsair Flash Voyager ,PNY Micro Attache,PNY Metro Attache.High speed flash disk arent easily available in the indian market and the ones available are insanely costly.OCZ basic and turbo models has one of the best read and write speeds.Refrain yourself from buying Moserbaer,Amkette,Imation.

Partitioning your pendrive   

1.You can partition the drives easily with lexar flip bit tool.More info available here.Lexar flip bit doesnt support all PD's.It works on Corsair,PNY but not on Kingston.

2.Registry Method :Multiple Partitions on USB Stick Storage

Protecting Data

- Creating a windows supported securezone and public partition - Memory Bar will allow you to create upto two partitons : - 1.Password protected Secure Zone 2.Public Area - Upon insertion the public area will only be accessible.You cant access both partitions at the same time.The public area can be made bootable just like a normal flashdisk.It is similar to Kingston old soft.Make sure you Readme.txt before using memory bar .(Google for download link)

-Using Truecrypt is the best way to protect data

-PDs with Chipsbank controller can try the FlashDisk Manager tool .Quick Start Guide for Flash Disk (Chipsbank Controller)

Unable to Format a Pen drive

Common Issues and Helpful Tips to Avoid Potential Data Loss or Data Corruption on a Corsair USB Flash Drive

Try Windows Disk Manager Utilty or the HP Format Tool .If you get an error like "CFG Table not found" or if the PD is getting detected as a 8MB drive then read pages here and here.

Booting from a Pen drive

• Windows XP /Windows 7 - Skip the old methods - Novicorp WinToFlash

• Boot Various Linux Distros (Forget UNetBOOTIN), specific ISO's ,floppy images from a single pendrive :- Ubuntu,Backtrack,KonBoot,Acronis True Image,Super Grub Disk,Gparted,Super Grub Disk,Sea Tools,etc- Ultimate thread.

Buying the best portable Harddisk

• Maxtor One Touch 4 is my personal favourite
  

• Package Contents:-

1. HDD with preloaded software
2. Mini USB Cable
3. Maxtor Safety Drill recovery (Linux Live CD based on KNOPPIX)
4. Software CD
5. Seagate 5400.3 PR SATA HDD
   

• Cons

1. Surface Prone to Scratches
2. No Pouch for HDD
   

The Seagate Freeagent GO is similar to Maxtor One touch IV.The only differenes are:-

1. Short USB cable supports USB 2.0 only.
2. The Seagate Freeagent GO does not support complete Locking of partitions.
3. One Touch Button Backup and Maxtor Safety Drill missing.
4. Seagate Manager is similar to Maxtor Manager and supports both HDDs.However you cannot lock partitions using Seagate Manager.
5. The Maxtor casing is a lot easier to open and you wont get into warranty void problems.

Recovering Partitions

If you have deleted a partition by mistake or partitions are corrupted coz of cheap chinese casings the first thing you should try is undeleting the partition .Not all data recovery softwares support this mode .

Try:-Testdisk,Active @Partition Recovery,Acronis Disk Director with Recovery Expert,Diskinternals Partition Recovery.