With the recent drop in prices for flash-based storage drives, it has become very tempting to buy one. The average price of 1GB thumb drives is almost around Rs.600.
Today, we take a look at some of portable storage drives from PQI. All of these drives have a storage capacity of 1GB, but they are still different from each other especially in their physical form. Read on to find more.
PQI U330 1GB Thumbdrive
This is one of the most basic and ordinary-looking drive from PQI. However, PQI advertises the U330 to be one of the fastest thumb drives in read/write tests. That we will conclude only after we are done with our benchmarks. The drive is plug-n-play and doesn't require any drivers to be installed when used with any OS after Windows 2000 or Mac OS 10.x.
The bundle didn't have any driver CD bundled along; so it won't be possible to use the drive with Win98/Me/NT. A USB extension cable has been bundled along.
Specifications Interface: USB 1.1 & 2.0
Capacity: 512MB~4GB
OS Supported: Windows ME, 2000, XP, Mac 10.1 or above
Power Supply: DC 3.3/5V " 10%
Power Consumption: Read <100mA, Write <100mA, Standby <70mA, Unconfiguration <70mA, Suspend <0.5mA
Dimensions: 67 x 17 x 2.5 mm (2.64 x 0.67 x 0.1 in)
Weight: 10 g (0.02 lb)
Benchmark
Performance We transferred our standard test folder, which contains hundreds of smaller files to and from the drive, after which we transferred a single large file in both directions. Following are the results:
Single File Read (700 MB) Time Taken: 35 Seconds
Speed: 20 MBps
Single File Write (700 MB) Time Taken: 50 Seconds
Speed: 14 MBps
As you see, this drive has excellent write speeds and read speeds. Let's see if SiSoft Sandra 2007 has anything different to say.
SiSoft Sandra 2007
Conclusion The PQI U330 1GB sells for Rs. 1175, which make it a pricy option. But if you are looking for a drive with excellent build quality and superb transfer speed, this may be the one. However, there are better options; one of them is here.
good report for an excelent product.i need info as to where in karnataka i can buy it and how much will it cost??plz do reply soon..
by Rohan
from Mangalore
on 22/02/07 09:01 AM
This is one of the coolest flash drives. I have a couple of them with me all the time. They are really thin and used to come with a credit card sized holder where you can slide in the flash drives. The holder itself will nice fit in the credit card holder section of a wallet. They no longer sell it witht he credit card sized holder.
by Srikanth
from Hyderabad
on 16/02/07 04:37 PM
i bought a pen drive last month..its a little slow..i also have a transcend but the speed is a litle faster on thhat..how come? pls let me know why this is...
by sid
from mumbai
on 16/02/07 03:39 PM
hey i just got one of these card drives from hong kong..2 gb capacity..the featuers looked pretty good but as soon as I started to use it, most of them dont wrk that well..there are IP conflicts everytime u want to send/receive emails from the card drive. the main function of this product is storage...for that u can just get a regular pen drive.! even a biometric one will increase ure security...these fancy products only look good with very limited utility..
by danny
from pune
on 16/02/07 02:24 PM
could you pls elaborate on the interface specs for PQI Pro 220 1GB. Looking at the pic, it would seem to me that I would need a card reader to access this drive. I hope this isn't the case and it does support a std USB interface. Hoping to buy one soon, so looking fwd to a clarification on this at the earliest pls.
by prashrash
from Secunderabad
on 16/02/07 10:37 AM
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