Introduction

Unlike just over a decade ago where the only consumer portable storage solution was probably only the floppy disk, today hundreds of products exist, for different needs and people. The floppy disk is clearly dying, with its very low capacity being unable to store even a small amount of today’s data, or even a high resolution picture at all. Optical storage is not hindered by its limited capacity, since the optical disks can store a handful of data, but because of their inconvenient read and write procedures. The best portable storage solutions are the external hard disk drives and flash disk drives. The external hard disk drives offer great capacities, but their size and power needs limit their portability. So, that leaves only the flash disk drives as a very small, portable and easy to use storage solution.

The flash disk drives evolved rapidly through the past couple of years. The first drives that came to exist, not long ago, were limited to 32MB and 64MB capacities and also they used to cost well over 100$. Now the smallest capacity available already are probably the 256MB drives, and they cost less than what most people need for eating out. Of course there are much larger drives, with the recent release of 1GB and 2GB drives. And all these in an USB powered device, smaller than an average key ring. The flash disk drives are usually made by memory manufacturers, so most of them did not stay out of this part of the market. Crucial, which is a part of Micron, one of the largest memory manufacturers worldwide, did not stay out either and was one of the first companies to release flash disk drives. Their flash disk drive product line-up is dubbed ‘Gizmo!’ and they already are counting their 3rd revision. The 3rd revision is even faster and much smaller than the initial revision, plus features much higher capacities of course, as you can guess. Crucial was nice enough to send us a Gizmo! 2GB drive, the largest currently offered. 2GB worth of storage inside a device that is about the size of your thumb certainly sounds nice, so let us see what this little device is capable of.

Manufacturer specifications and named features

“The new Crucial Gizmo! Hi-Speed version is faster than ever, and all that power is in a sleek device.”

The Crucial Gizmo! Hi-Speed USB Flash Drive
• Small form factor (68 mm by 20 mm) so multiple drives fit into neighboring USB ports
• LED indicates when data is transferring
• Plug and Play™
• Available in 128MB, 256MB, 512MB, 1GB, and 2GB

System requirements
• Windows ME, 2000, or XP
• Not compatible with Windows 98
• Mac OS 8.6 and above
• Available USB 1.1 or 2.0 port

For Hi-Speed performance
• Windows ME, 2000, or XP
• Mac OS 9.1 and above
• Available USB 2.0 port

Each Gizmo! comes with
• Lanyard
• Multilingual user guide

Backed by Crucial's limited lifetime warranty

Packaging and bundle

The 2GB version of the Gizmo! drive comes supplied in a retail plastic packaging, a rare thing for Crucial products as most are sold only by Crucial directly and not through resellers/stores. The packaging is sealed and cannot be opened without damaging it. Given the weight of the Gizmo!, which is next to nothing, the packaging is more than enough to protect it. The packaging names the basic specifications and features of the Gizmo!, much like any good retail packaging. Inside you aren’t going to find anything like a rich bundle, but this is a flash disk drive, not a motherboard or graphics card. There is a thin lanyard for those that would like the Gizmo! hanging around their necks, plus a small manual/warranty notice written in 6 languages.

The drive itself is silver, elegant, lightweight and simply very small. Less than 7cm long and 2cm wide (just over 2.5 inches long and 0,8 inches wide by the Imperial book) it can easily fit inside your jean’s smaller pocket. The unit has a simple futuristic design, with two out of the four edges being round and the other two making 90 degree turns. The unit has no sharp or pointed edges, so it shouldn’t hurt you inside your pocket or similar situations. The front of the unit has the Crucial logo engraved and names the capacity of the unit next to it, along with the access LED of the unit. At the rear, only the “USB 2.0 Gizmo!” indication exists, along with the “Made in Taiwan” notice in very small letters. No surprise, most electronics and high end technology items are made in eastern Asia nowadays.

The Gizmo! is extremely small, so when inserted into an USB slot it will not restrict any other cables towards any direction. As you can see from the picture, the Gizmo! is almost just as big as an USB cable connector, and not thicker or wider than the USB port itself. Therefore, it cannot restrict any other cables or devices around it. The Gizmo! also has a red LED, which lights up when the Gizmo! is attached to an USB port. The LED blinks slowly when the drive is attached but not being accessed, but will blink rapidly once the drive is being accessed.