Intro/The Package

The drive chosen for this test is the USM-2GH, which provides 2GB of truly tiny storage. Included in the plastic clam-shell packaging is the drive, a small rubber storage sleeve with both a clip and a small bungee-like tether, and a small sheet of stickers with which you can customize your Micro Drive Tiny.

Also included on the drive itself is VirtualExpander, Sony's compression software. This software is simple to use in that it can be run directly from the drive for occasional use, or permanently installed on a PC so that it's available at startup. Although Sony advertises compression ratios of 3:1, it's important to note that this ratio is very dependent upon what it is that you're trying to compress. File types that already represent some type of compression such as JPEG, MPEG, or ZIP will show little or no benefit from additional compression such as that provided by VirtualExpander. However, files containing mainly text or other non-random data such as spreadsheets and databases could see significant gains.

The Drive Examined

Sony gives the dimensions of the Tiny as being 1.2mm x 5.0mm x 6.1mm. To get an idea of just how small this drive is, here is a picture of the Tiny next to a U.S. Quarter:

Although the drive's size may be attractive out of pure novelty, there is much more benefit to be found here. With traditional thumb drives, finding a way to keep them on one's person at all times can be cumbersome. Attaching a drive to a set of keys is one alternative, but the result can be uncomfortable to carry in a pocket. Neck lanyards seem to have caught on among the truly geeky, but are hardly appropriate for someone trying to blend into normal society. The Tiny's form factor simplifies matters, allowing discrete carry within a wallet or even the zipper pocket in your KangaROOS shoes, should you be lucky enough to still own a pair. Those using thumb drives to store portable applications such as Portable Thunderbird or the like will find this of great benefit as the ability to have these applications available at all times is made much less obtrusive.

Where performance is concerned, the Tiny is about what one expects from the Micro Vault series of products; not the fastest drive on the block but certainly speedy enough for day-to-day use. The drive of course offers USB 2.0 support, and will work fine with USB 1.1 hosts as well. Testing with HD Tach showed a respectable 10.5 MB/s average sequential read speed and a 1.7ms random access time. CPU utilization on our test system was comparable to other USB 2.0 devices at 4%. This isn't nearly as fast as some of the high-performance flash drives that are on the market today but is plenty for average use.