PNY Attache USB 1.1 Flash Drive Review

Summary

This device allows me to feel secure that my documents are being backed up on an external drive. If you are moving this from computer to computer and need to transfer a lot of material very quickly you will want an upgrade the memory.

What is a flash drive

This one is a tiny 4” by ½” unit. It is part metal, part plastic gizmo and lets me take all my data from my computer and transfer it to this tiny little thing.

Pros

It comes with a long blue cord, called a Lanyard. If I wanted I could carry it around my neck. I can then take the unit to another computer and have my material on it. I can throw it into my pocketbook - it is truly portable and worrying about having the wrong disc with me is a thing of the past.

It will transfer data, music and images from one PC to another. It is essentially a storage device.

It weighs less than 15 grams which is so light you won’t know it’s in your bag.

Cons

It took me an hour to initially transfer my hard drive to the Flash.

I decided on the 64MB flash drive. Which one you will buy will depend on how much data you either will be transferring to another PC or how much you save on it.

It costs about $35. I could have bought 128 MB for $70. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to spend $70 I didn’t think I needed it. I also realized that if 64 MB wasn’t enough I could buy another one. That is not the best way to go and if I were going to do it over again I would buy 128 MB. I have thousands of documents, pictures and about 20 pages of websites.

When I first got it I put everything on the flash drive. I used up 64 MB quickly. I am lucky because we have a second computer in our house. I connected the Flash easily to the other computer and transferred the data to the laptop. That freed the 1.1 Flash Drive so I could go ahead and transfer more documents from my computer onto the flash drive. Each time I transfer data from the drive to my husband's computer it take about 15 minutes.

You’ll find 256 MB for $90 so it’s worth the jump from 128 MB to 256 MB in my opinion. 32 MB, 512 MB and 1GB are also available.

The Attaché’s LED flashes when data is being put on it. Don’t unplug the Attaché while it is being used or you will lose the data! It also can be affected by a virus as any part of your computer. You can protect it just as you do your hard drive. We are told that there is a switch built in that protects it from a virus attack but I still use a separate virus protection program. The PNY also has a write protect switch, which we are told prevents accidental erasing, or overwriting data.

This unit lists 1.1MB/s as the write time and 700MB/s as the read time. These numbers translate to not being the fastest on the market but I find it quite adequate. It took about 2 seconds to transfer this document word file to the Flash.

There is a 1-year limited warranty on this product.

Thumbs Up for the PNY Attaché USB 1.1 Flash Drive. This is a small unit that is easy to work and is great for the home user.

Jo's Quick Tip

Your pain will be felt by others when you have worked on a piece for an hour and then you lose electricity or your computer crashes. It only takes one of those times to really listen to this tip. Save your material. I use Word, which also allows me to spell and grammar check. Not only do I back it up on my hard drive but I back it up on a flash drive. You may also want to back it up on a disc drive.