Verbatim 4GB Store ‘n’ Go USB Drive

INTRODUCTION

Data storage and convenience coupled with the portability of moving it from Point A to Point B received a huge boost a few years ago with the advent of the USB drive. These types of drives go by many names ranging from "flash drives", "thumb drives", "ROM drives", and others to numerous to mention. Each manufacturer offers something unique to their own brand to either increase speed, extend storage capacity, or decrease the physical size of the drive to facilitate the needs of the potential consumer. Speaking of consumers, these types drives can in most cases allow anyone from a student to the business professional to easily carry small to moderately large amounts of data and easily transfer it from one computer to another. The only caveat being that each of that both of the systems must provide a USB port. What reasonably modern computer doesn't have a USB port? Duh!

You might be asking yourself at this point "I'm a computer enthusiast and just how does this type of device affect my world?" Ok, do you remember the floppy drive you once used or for some of you that's maybe not past tense? This category of product can and effectively does totally eliminate their need! The small number of enthusiasts that still use a floppy drive do it for one of two purposes:   1) To flash their motherboard's BIOS; or 2) To boot their computer to a DOS environment in an emergency. USB drives have effectively removed that need. Flashing your BIOS with one couldn't be any easier. The storage size for some drives is large enough where you can put a scaled down version of Windows XP Pro on it, so forget DOS; but for diehards DOS can just as booted to.

USB drives also offer you the ability to store security information in a single location that can easily be used on a multitude of devices. You can store hundreds of MP3s and even small movies on the larger drives. If are anal about your apps and travel and want to use certain smaller applications such as email clients,, browsers, and the like on a computer that's not yours, here's your opportunity. I could go on and on but I think you get the message.

Today we'll be reviewing a product that for lack of better terms I'll call a hybrid USB drive, the Verbatim 4GB Store ‘n’ Go USB HD Drive. Why do I call it a hybrid? Read on and ye shall be enlightened on the answers to this and many other questions!

A CLOSER LOOK

The Verbatim 4GB Store ‘n’ Go USB HD Drive comes nicely packaged in a secure plastic enclosure.

The package includes the 4GB Store ‘n’ Go USB Drive, a padded vinyl case, a USB extension cable, and a small instruction page that is relatively comprehensive.

The next image is a frontal view of the drive with the attached USB cable removed from its storage socket.

Finally, a view of the Store ‘n’ Go in use on top of my Lian Li G70 case plugged into one of its front USB ports. Notice also the blue Verbatim Logo in the center of the drive. The logo actually has a drive activity LED behind it that lights when in use and flickers accordingly with drive activity.