Yesterday GetUSB.info reported about a USB duplication service company that can remove partitions on a USB drive.  USBCopier can remove Read Only USB partition and remove CDROM USB partition through some sort of software they have.  They company can also remove those partitions for large numbers of drives.  I guess that makes sense if you are in the business of flash duplication.

As GetUSB mentions, there is a utility out there to remove the partition of a U3 drive, but that only works for a specific model of flash drive.  We know many times, the promotional drives you get from trade shows have the partition with the companies information on there, and more often that not, it’s a CDROM partition with an autorun.  The autorun gets very annoying because continually launches upon connection.  It would be nice to remove the CDROM USB partition so you could use the full capacity of the drive without the autorun.

Source: GetUSB.info.

MacWorld posted an article about a French website getting the MacBook Pro to boot from a SD card in the SD slot.  Not a huge feat, but I think it’s an indication that laptop manufacturers, both PC and Mac, will continue going down the road of being Optical-less [if that’s a world].

If you are a MacBook Pro owner and interested in this bootability, please visit the following link: here.

The MacWorld article also mentioned a new SD format of SDXC which is based off the new Windows exFAT format for extended FAT and FAT32 sizes.  I’ll dig up some research on this and report back.

Source: MacWorld.

Elan is launching an adapter to connect any USB stick to your mobile device via the microSD slot.

Elan is a UK based company who developed the “Mobidapter” for mobile power users.  The connector does not require drivers and will allow any USB device to be seen by the mobile host.  Further, the Mobidapter doesn’t require a PC, so important tasks like backup, sync or accessing files will be much easier.

Unfortunately, there is no word on price and expected ship date is mid June 2009.

The TASCAM’s DP-004 Digital Pocketstudio is based on 30 years of easy-to-use cassette Portastudios, and updated with four tracks of CD-quality digital recording. Like those groundbreaking Portastudios, a row of knobs set levels and pan instead of a list of menus.

The DP-004 can record two sources at once to the included 1GB SD Card. A built-in stereo condenser microphone makes it simple to record anywhere you go, perfect for concerts, rehearsals and songwriting inspirations. A pair of 1/4″ jacks on the rear panel allow you to connect your own microphones or sources. You can even switch the inputs to guitar level for recording.

You can connect to the Pocketstudio via two 1/4″ mic line inputs, switchable guitar input, headphone line out or USB 2.0 connection.

For recording options you have four track digital multitrack recording with 44.1kHz/16-bit WAV recording.  The unit records directly to SD cards with autopunch, repeat and record undo functions.  You can also have a dedicated stereo mixdown track.

As for power, just a couple AA batteries will keep this going for nearly 8 hours.

Street price is right at $200 bills.

TASCAM Pocketstudio product page.

Western Digital the leading on-line storage manufacturer based in sunny Southern California spent $65 million earlier this week to purchase Silicon Systems, a leading supplier of solid state memory drives.

The acquisition makes WD a player in the red-hot SSD industry, and helps fill a major void in WD’s portfolio. In a statement, WD president and CEO John Coyne said the acquisition will be “modestly accretive to revenue and margins” and will help the company address a $400 million SSD market, which encompasses consumer netbooks, clients and enterprises.

This rounds out Western Digitals portfolio to include solid state storage, WD branded products, client storage, consumer storage and enterprise storage units.

Source: Ziff Davis.

Review of 16GB Flash Drives

GetUSB.info posted a review article about 16GB USB flash drives.  The benchmarking and testing was done by Test Freaks.  Test Freaks is a website based specifically on review and testing of everyday technology so users can make an informed decision about their technology purchases.  The review of 16GB flash drives is very in-depth and detailed so depending on what you look for in a flash drive, this review will have it summed up nicely for you.

The 16GB USB review includes the following drives:

• Adata Sport Series RB19 16gb
• Corsair Flash Voyager
• HP USB Flash Drive v125W
• Imation Swivel Flash Drive
• Kingston Data Traveler100
• Kingston DataTraveler HyperX
• Memorex Traveldrive
• OCZ Diesel
• OCZ Throttle
• Patriot Exporter XT
• PNY Attache
• PQI Traveling Disk 1221
• Ridata EZdrive Lightning Series
• Sandisk Cruzer Micro
• Super Talent Pico-C
• Transcend JetFlash Elite Enabled
• Verbatim Store ‘n’ Go

I wont give away the full details on the 16GB USB review - please check with Test Freaks. However, it is painfully clear that Transcend Jetflash is a horrible drive. Which is funny as they spend a good amount of marketing time and money saying they are the best performing. Transcend must be taking Ford’s marketing philosophy and advertising their weakness. “Built Ford Tough” ha - those cars are anything but tough.

To get a bit of their approach Test Freaks considers:

…diskbench is nice in that it tells us the actual times and transfer rates to complete the tasks of Copy To or Write To the USB drives, Read From and Copy From as well. I run these three tests on my USB drives because they are the most common things people are going to be doing with their USB drives.  First up is testing with the 350MB .AVI Video file, lower scores are better as they are shown in seconds. The first test is for Copy To or Write To the USB drives.

For the full 16GB USB Drive review please visit Test Freaks webpage.

Thanks Anton.

Buy.com is giving away free shipping when you buy a 4GB microSDHC card for $9.86.  What a great deal!

Get the Dealz now.

Here is the company line:

microSecureDigital High-Capacity (microSDHC) is a new class of memory cards designed to enhance the performance of high-quality still and video cameras. microSDHC cards from Dane Elec Flash meet all the standards of the SD Card Association 2.0 Specification for SD cards larger than 2 GB. Although identical in size to a standard microSD card, microSDHC cards are different and are only compatible with devices designed for SDHC. Please check the Owners Manual or Users Guide to verify that your device and your card reader, if you intend to use one, are microSDHC compatible. All Dane Elec microSDHC cards include adapters for use in any miniSDHC or SDHC device, furthering their utility. In the same manner, when using either adapter, ensure that the intended device is HC compatible. All Dane Elec microSDHC cards come with a 10-year warranty.Still interested - get the GFM Dealz now!

It’s about time companies put some unique branding to microSD cards.  The format is #1 for mobile devices, and although it sits hidden in your SIM card slot 99% of the time, it’s nice to see some cool prints on the device.  Maybe this will encourage users to mainstream on microSD rather than USB for data storage and transfer.

This design, the microSD skull is also accompanied by another sytle which features a heart - I guess Elecom, the manufacturer is going for a his and hers theme.

Pricing isn’t set, but I wouldn’t expect them to be a penny more than a typical microSD card.

Source:  Ixplora.com.

Flash Memory manufacturers will rejoice with this news.  No longer will their flash memory be limited with the FAT32 file system, but rather an unlimited size of storage space.

Up to this point FAT file systems had a limitation of 4GB for a single file size and up to 32GBs for an entire volume.  But no more.  Microsoft has released a new exFAT file system.  This means our SD, CF, USB will become supersized and no longer need to worry about dynamic file structures of NTFS.  With USB memory getting bigger each year, this is great news for mobile storage.

On January 27 2009, Microsoft released their new exFAT file system.  Or extended File Allocation Table [exFAT]. Here is some information off the Microsoft website: (more…)

SanDisk and LG developed technology to lock data to a microSD card.  Their goal was to data load information to a microSD card which could only be used with a specific device.  This ability would insure content isn’t used with other devices or copied over to another user for unauthorized use.

These cards could help to make a particular handset or plan more attractive to a subscriber by offering songs, movies, maps for GPS (Global Positioning System) navigation or applications. However, locking the card will ensure consumers couldn’t use the content elsewhere.

SanDisk reports the data lock portion could be updated remotely via IP protocols which means a vendor could update music lists, content and video depending on the subscribers requirements, needs or membership.

Some critics believe this technology is coming at a bad time, since users enjoy cross platform sharing for their music, along with Apples move towards less DRM on their music.  However, what these critics don’t see is the need to protect other types of intellectual property.  Although music and video is the big numbers, mainstream target market, there is an infinite need in the pro-sumer and corporate world for data lock and protection. (more…)