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Date |
: Sept 26th, 2001 |
| Category |
: Storage |
| Manufacturer |
: Trek 2000 |
| Author |
: Jin-Wei Tioh |
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The ThumbDrive Secure comes in a cherry-red cardboard box, with a well written user manual, a certificate of warranty, and a driver disk.
The ThumbDrive Secure certainly turned more than a few heads, creating an instant "must have" feeling among many of the people whom we showed it to. More than a few mistook this compact 60x17x7mm (LxWxH) package to be some form of keychain. Fortunately, no one made away with it.
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How is it different from other removable storage devices? The ThumbDrive Secure integrates the storage device, the power brick, the data cable and the storage media all in one neat little package. And as its name suggests, the ThumbDrive Secure is about the size of an average person's thumb. It is a solid state storage device, meaning that it uses memory chips, rather than other physical media, to store your data. By virtue of this, it is hardier, which translates into a lower risk of data loss / corruption, something that all end-users want. Additionally, a solid state storage device also has an advantage in terms of latency. Taking a HDD for example, even in a modern HDD, such as the Seagate Barracuda ATA II, there is a 13.3ms delay for the actuator and platter to get in place when reading data. Assuming that the ThumbDrive Secure uses 13.3ns memory (to simplify calculations), the ThumbDrive Secure would be 1,000,000 faster than the Barracuda! While transfer rate is also heavily influenced by other factors such as drivers, firmware and interface, this at least ensures that latency will not be a performance bottleneck.
As implied earlier, the ThumbDrive Secure uses a self-contained USB interface. It currently sports USB 1.1 technology, with a faster USB 2.0 version in the pipelines. Since USB is a hotplug interface by design (ie. a USB device can be plugged/unplugged while the PC is still active), installation is greatly simplified.
True enough, plugging in the ThumbDrive Secure pops up the standard "New Hardware Found" window. Simply insert the driver disk and hit it. Once the drivers are installed, a small utility prompts you for your security code to access the contents of the ThumbDrive. This is the main highlight of the Secure line; without the correct access code, the ThumbDrive will not be assigned a drive letter, making its contents inaccessible. You are required to enter your access code everytime you plug in the ThumbDrive, adding some much needed security to your data. Subsequently, you only need to plug in the ThumbDrive, enter said access code, and it is automatically assigned a new drive letter, all ready to be used like any other drive.
To cap off the features list (pun intended) is a protective cover for the USB connector, a write protection switch at one end and a LED. The cover shields the USB interface from accidental damage. When the write protection switch is in the "open" position, data can be read and written to the ThumbDrive Secure. When the switch is "closed", data can only be read. The LED serves as an activity indicator, lighting up when the computer has detected the ThumbDrive Secure, and flickering during I/O operations. Trek Technology claims data can be safely stored on the ThumbDrive for approximately 10 years, something that that is not readily verifiable. If anyone has managed to develop a time acceleration device, please do inform us. 
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