USB Flash Drives- OCZ Rally 2

[UncleS2]

I've been toying with the idea of a USB Flash Drive(learned they're also called finger, thumb, pen, jump, & who knows what else drives!) for some time, just started looking in earnest the last 3-4 days. Decided I might as well get a reasonably serious capacity, & settled on 2GB.

Late last night I finally ordered the OCZ Rally2, in 2GB, from NewEgg dot com. ~$45.50 *shipped*, plus a $14 rebate(expires today- but it looks like they may run it the last half of the month, maybe every month?), that'll put it under $32 final price. Those who rate such things ay these are both good *and * fast- once the speed kinga, they'v now been outrun by a new ATP ToughDrive, but the OCZ should still be fine for me.

To put the price in perspective- Best Buy prices were really high, w/poor selection. And the best WalMart had was a Sandisk "Cruzer Micro" in 1GB, looked really nice(but review I read says it's *much* slower than the OCZ Rally2)- for ~$48,50 w/tax. More $$, for half th storage, & much slower speed. No thanks

Main use for now- to store pix of my brother's kids to take to WalMart or Walgreens & get prints made for Mom.

Yeah, I know I could email 'em- but have had problems trying that so far.

After looking hard, this was the best deal by far that I found for something fast. After all, I don't want to have to wait for 10 minutes or more while the pix download at WM!

BTW, NewEgg has the same drive in 1GB for ~$28.50 shipped, with $8 rebate that expires today(or tomorrow). Sorry about that, but I just found it late last night.

What do you think- just how bad did I get skinned?

 

[97tbird]

You'll love it.

I just got it 2 days ago (2GB) from Newegg, and it really is verynice, solid, looks good and FAAAASTT!!!!
(I had the old Rally-1 512MB before and THAT was faster than anything I've ever seen, but the new Rally-2 2GB is even faster). The Aluminum body is great, comes with USB extention cable.

Get it!

 

[97tbird]

sorry; I see you already ordered it. rest assured you made a good choice. I don't think I'll ever get another brand now.
The 512 MB Rally-1 I have is still going strong, too. and I abused that one a lot, it's solid drive, I just wanted more capacity, so this time went with the 2GB Rally-2.

 

[The_Jeff]

These things are great for "sneaker netting" files into or out of someone's unnetworked computer, or one on dial-up, or getting drivers into a new build, once windows is running.

Only thing I bought this year's black friday... only thing they really wanted to sell, it seems.

 

[CivicFan]

I bought a 2 gig flash drive last week, too. It's got an MP3 player and FM radio on it, too. I got it from buy.com - about $45 after the Google checkout and rebate.

 

[UncleS2]

The 2GB OCZ flash drive arrived today- first thing I noticed, it should probably be called the OCZ Rally*Squared*, or Rally^2, not the Rally Two.(Of course, I was a Math major, am pretty old, & therefore am not very representative of the target market.

)

First impressions: It's very small! Plastic card-pak included the flash drive, a USB "extension cord" ~2 ft long, and a neck lanyard. I thought the lanyard was pretty cool, highly preferable to those useless(IMO) wrist-banger straps. And the attaching loop can be removed from the lanyard to be put on a keychain, etc.

Nice easily-gripped matte finish on the black aluminum body, and a really *Bright* amber LED when it's plugged in to the computer. Now I gotta load lots of pictures into it & make sure it actually works before mailing off all the Rebate paperwork.

Now, lessee if I can do this without embarassing myself:

2GB nominal should actually be 512 meg*4 ~ 2,048,000,000 bytes, yes? If we take ye olde 1.44 Meg floppys at face value, that means that the 2GB flash drive should hold as much data as 2048/1.44 = 1422.2222 floppy drives!! OK, deduct a bit for real world usage- that should still leave well over 1300 floppy disks worth of storage, on a unit smaller than a pack of Wrigley's Spearmint Gum.

And if you want even more, you can get it in 4GB or even 8GB, all it takes is a little more money. Holy Cow!

 

[CivicFan]

How things have changed in 8 years. When Apple came out with the iMac, it didn't have a floppy drive, and it was strange. Then for a brief moment, we had the zip drive 'craze' with the 100 meg disks until it was clear that the most you could use them for was about 10 times before the disks self destructed.

It makes me wonder - what will the storage medium of choice be in 8 years and what capacity.

 

[The_Jeff]

They keep saying holograms will be the storage of the future. This stays vaporware.

I prefer the lack of moving parts of these flash drives, but wonder about their infinite re-writability... and, hence, durability.

 

[WishIhadatruck]

After reading the posts above I could resist and bought one myself. I've been considering getting a flash drive once the size got big enough and the price small enough. I've decided it was time. I ordered it from Newegg as well. It should be here Thursday.