Crucial Gizmo! High Speed USB 2.0 Drive

Reviews: Storage

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Brian Kristensen
Kurtis
Crucial
Jan. 3, 2005

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Introduction

The reign of the floppy disk is finally coming to an end. 3.5" diskettes have been around forever and while they have had a good run, their physical size, minute storage capacity and dreadfully slow access times are a constant reminder that they are a thing of the past. Even rewritable CDs can be a bit of a pain these days. With their large size and delicate surface that needs to be protected, many people have been looking for other methods of portable storage. USB drives, also known as thumb drives, aren't anything new but have recently been given a lot of attention from manufacturers and consumers alike. The first generation of USB drives offered a very nice portable solution that you could simply toss in your pocket, but they were still relatively limited in their capacities and were quite costly. As of late, manufacturers have been revising their drives and offering more affordable solutions. Today you can find thumb drives in capacities up to 2 GB and others that are literally smaller than your thumb!

Last week we took a look at Corsair's entry into the USB drive market and were extremely pleased with their offering. Today we will be examining Crucial's latest version of their popular "Gizmo!' thumb drive. The first Gizmo, as most other drives at the time, was a bit bulky and didn't support the faster USB 2.0 speeds. The Gizmo we will be checking out today is Crucial's third revision of the drive which has become very well known for its extremely small size.

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Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: First Looks / Features / Software
Page 3: Performance
Page 4: Conclusion

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4 User Comments

1 - Posted by handrail on January 4, 2005 - 8:58 am

wow, that thing seems a bit sucky. surprising from crucial.

maybe they mis-labeled a usb 1.1 drive on accident.

2 - Posted by Guest on January 4, 2005 - 3:06 pm

Congratulations on a good review there.
However, there is a very important mistake which I believe you should revise your review in order to correct.

The Win98/SE drivers on Crucial's website are for Gizmo1 usb drives only -- *not* the third revision which you have tested here. According to their own specifications on their website http://www.crucial.com/store/partspecs.asp?imodule...
the USB2 Gizmo is "NOT compatible with 95/98/SE" (verbatim). Those in need of a Win98-compatible usb drive might have serious problems with your review if they purchase a Gizmo, only to find out that it does not work with Win9x operating systems.

Other than this small mistake, I liked your article. May I suggest Iomega's Micro Mini USB drives for a future review?

kind regards,
Giannis, Greece

3 - Posted by deluver_15@hotmail.com on April 19, 2007 - 5:25 pm

i am sick of this. all my work has been lost because this thing has malfunction. now i've got to do everything all over.

4 - Posted by Kurtis on April 19, 2007 - 8:50 pm

hindsight is 20/20, but...

it's always a good idea to use a USB drive just as a means of transporting data, you should always have a copy somewhere else.

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