Big Advantages From Small-Footprint USB 2.0 Drives

Small-footprint USB 2.0 flash and hard-disk drives can be used in a number of applications from making the many kinds of backups you and your customers need every day to constantly reminding customers of you and your business. Their small size and relatively high speeds suit them well to tasks formerly entrusted to slower, more costly, more cumbersome and sometimes less reliable media such as tape, diskettes and Zip disks. System builders can use flash drives for building simple backup systems, capturing data at a client's site, installing software anywhere, and more.

USB flash drives come in a variety of sizes, ranging from 32 MB to 8 GB. Larger flash drives are still quite expensive. That's where disk-based USB drives come in. A 2.6-inch x 0.79-inch x 0.46-inch 4-GB Sandisk Cruzer Mini drive sells for over $300. But a 3.75-inch x 1.875-inch x .5-inch 4-GB hard-disk-based I/O Magic Gigabank drive, pictured below, costs only slightly more than half that, or about $180.

USB 2.0 can handle throughput rates of up to 30 MB per second. As with all disk drives, reading from small-footprint USB drives is faster than writing to them. Currently, flash memory drives are capable of average write speeds ranging from 10 MB to 25 MB per second and read speeds of between 11 MB and nearly 28 MB per second. Tiny USB hard drives are much slower, with write speeds in the range of 3 MB per second and read speeds of about 6 MB per second. For specifics, always check with the manufacturer of drives you're thinking of buying.

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Putting Small Footprint USB Drives to Work

There are at least five ways system builders can use small-footprint USB drives:

Let's look at each of these options in more detail.

Making Backups

Many clients fear the loss of data, whether on personal computers or mission-critical servers. While easy-to-use data backup software is readily available, where do you put their backups? And how can you assure backups are taken off-site?

Tape is still the backup option of choice for SMB and enterprise backups, though disk is quickly becoming a favorite in many IT shops. Older removable media drives, such as 1.44 MB diskettes and Iomega's Zip drives, are still used by some. But for quick and reliable backups you can carry in your pocket when you go off-site, you can't beat hot-pluggable, small-footprint USB 2.0 drives.

Tape backup devices are relatively expensive and, except for the more costly, slow. Larger USB external units are too large to easily take off-site. Zip disks are fine, but the disks are relatively large, possibly discouraging users from taking them off-site. And I'm sure you have had awful experiences trying to read a 1.44 MB diskette made on one drive on another drive.

Sometimes backups to small-footprint USB 2.0 drives can best be made by simply dragging and dropping files from local drives to the small footprint drive. You also can write simple batch files to copy files or even issue copy commands at the Command Prompt. But the best and easiest way to assure accurate file backups is with the use of a backup application that lets you make on-demand and scheduled backups--or even continuous, event-driven backups that occur whenever a file changes.

Many excellent backup applications are available, including full-blown backup programs from vendors such as Veritas, EMC-Dantz, and Symantec. There is also a range of less complex products that do an excellent job of on-demand, scheduled and event-driven backups, including Gelsoft's SynchroMagic and Tobias Giesen's Super Flexible File Synchronizer. In the screen shot below, I'm using Super Flexible File Synchronizer to back up to a flash drive (Q:).

Fortunately, many small-footprint drives come with good backup software. For example, SanDisk provides software with its Cruzer USB flash drives to easily backup files and Outlook folders. In the screen capture below, I'm about to back up the standard Outlook folders to the Cruzer using SanDisk's CruzerSync software.

And in this next screen capture, I'm using CyberLink's PowerBackup software, (which comes included with i/oMagic's 2.2 GB and 4 GB small-footprint USB GigaBank hard-disk drives) to select a folder on my C: drive for backup to a 4 GB GigaBank drive:

As you can see, software from small-footprint device vendors makes end-user backup easy. If it's easy for end users, then system builders will like it, too. Especially for on-site backups, often under pressure and the watchful eyes of clients.

While we're on the subject of backups, think small-footprint USB 2.0 drives when you need to copy anything and take it back to the office for analysis. Use these handy drives to reliably transport anything from log files to databases.

But here are two cautions you should observe with small footprint USB 2.0 drives for backups.

Installing Software

Do you regularly install software in the field? Are you're tired of carrying all those CD ROMs? Growing weary of slower DVD access speeds? Then try copying installation software to small-footprint USB 2.0 drives. You can get a DVD's worth of software on one 4 GB disk-based drive such as the one from i/oMagic I mentioned above. If you crave higher data transfer speeds, go for a high-capacity, higher-cost flash drive.

Many business computers have CD or DVD drives only so software can be installed. By using small footprint USB drives, you can eliminate those drives, save money, and reduce the chance of viruses. If writable CD or DVD drives are installed, you can also reduce data theft.

Are you worried about end users misusing USB ports on their computers? Then take a look at GFI Software's LANGuard. This network-based Windows application can control which Active Directory users are allowed to use removable storage devices on a computer. In addition to devices that plug into a computer's USB ports, LANGuard controls access to diskette and CD drives.

Setting Up New Disk Drives

Small-footprint USB 2.0 drives are great for installing images on blank hard disk drives using software such as Symantec's Ghost. Just copy images to your small-footprint drive, and you're ready to go.

Want to boot up from a small-footprint drive, run Ghost, and put an image on a new drive? No problem. You can make a USB 2.0 drive bootable. Check out Oliver Aaltonen's "Boot From USB Key" Addendum for an excellent tutorial on this subject. Scroll down to the Responses section of this Web page for information on using Ghost on your bootable small-footprint USB drive. The tutorial uses Hewlett-Packard's USB Disk Format Utility Tool, which is available from HP here. Be sure to read this tutorial before buying a small-footprint USB drive for this purpose.

Transferring Data to Other Flash Drives without a Computer

Let's say you want to give some files to a customer: Both of you have flash drives, but neither of you currently has access to a computer. Well, if your flash drive is a self-powered FlashPoint USB Share Drive, you're all set. Just plug the other flash drive into the USB socket on the top of the FlashPoint drive. Data in a special area on your drive will be automatically transferred to the other drive, as shown in the photo below.

You can also use the FlashPoint drive to transfer your electronic business card to another small-footprint USB drive. You might even want to buy regular flash drives imprinted with your business logo and contact information. They make cool business cards. And if your clients clip them on their pockets or wear them around their necks, the drives become a constant marketing message for your company and your services, reminding your customer what a fine person you are worrying about the backup of their data!