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Take It All With You: Two 'Smart' USB Drives


The Memorex Mini TravelDrive and Iomega Mini let you run applications directly off a USB drive without muss or fuss.

By Barbara Krasnoff
Desktop Pipeline
September 28, 2005 09:41 AM

Mobility has become a byword of our tech-based society, and one of the most portable types of devices these days are USB drives. Also known as USB keys and memory keys (among other appellations), USB drives initially were used primarily as simple storage devices — you moved the data over to the drive and fetched it back again. Later, some companies bundled syncing software with their drives.


The Memorex Mini TravelDrive U3
Now, two companies, U3 and Iomega, are marketing software that allows you to pop your USB drive into any PC and work with your own applications as well as your own data. The drives must come with the appropriate firmware and the applications must be tweaked first by the vendor to work with these drives. The Web sites of both companies enable users to download trial versions of compliant applications (along with a judicious sampling of freeware).

U3, which was just launched on September 19, 2005, is an attempt to create a standard technology for running applications from USB drives. As of this writing, U3-based products had been announced by disgo, Memorex, disk2go, SanDisk, Intuix, Verbatim, and Kingston Technology.


The Iomega Mini
Iomega's Active Disk technology has been around since October, 2001, when, according to an Iomega rep, it became available as a free download to help customers who wanted to upgrade to Microsoft Windows XP. It also became a tool that enabled Iomega Zip drive users to run applications directly from their drives. In November, 2002, the software was made available to users of Iomega Mini and Micro Mini USB drives.

However, Iomega's technology is used by Iomega alone, while U3 is actively encouraging manufacturers to get on its bandwagon. In addition, U3 claims that, when you remove your drive, you'll leave no data, registry entries or other detritus behind to disturb the owner of the system. Iomega makes no such claims.

So how do these two technologies compare? I looked at two 256MB USB 2.0 drives: a pre-ship version of the U3-equipped Memorex Mini TravelDrive and an Iomega Mini. While these smart USB drives won't replace your trusty laptop, having one means that, as long as you have access to a system, you'll always have access to applications and your data. To those of us who are computer-dependent, that is a very reassuring thought.

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