June 9, 2011

Samsung S1 Mini

I have a 32 GB Kingston DataTraveler 200 Flash drive that I carry with me wherever I go for installing warez^H^H^H^H^Happlications. I have an older 4 GB Kingston DataTraveler Elite that I use for data.

Frankly, 32 GB isn't enough in these days of multi-gigabyte applications, and I really don't like to carry around a 2.5" portable drive, even though I have several of those. I've been wanting to get something larger, perhaps the 128 GB DataTraveler 200, but the price is just slightly out of my reach. (Actually, I paid more for the 4 GB DT Elite back in 2005 compared to the 128 GB DT 200 today, but it's painful to pay such high prices year after year to get the latest and greatest.) So when I came across the Samsung S1 Mini, a portable 1.8" with a reasonable price, I bought it immediately. The S1 Mini comes in six different colors, I bought the black one to go with my ThinkPad. The S1 Mini has been out for around two years, but it was never available here.



Here's a comparison shot between the WD My Passport Essential 500 GB portable drive, the Samsung S1 Mini, the Kingston DT 200, and Kingston DT Elite. The keyboard below is a ThinkPad X61 so it's slightly smaller than a standard sized keyboard.



One thing that always worries me when buying shrink-wrapped hard drives is how the USB port looks like. Sometimes drives claim to use standard USB ports, but they need a proprietary cable to fit into the proprietary hole. The iPhone was famous for this: it had a standard earphone jack, but it's recessed and most earphones won't fit into that hole. Portable hard drive reviews need to show how the USB port really looks like.



The drive speed is nothing to write home about. I didn't expect it to be any fast since it's a 1.8" drive, but it still me a long time to copy all my installation files from the DT200 to the S1 Mini.

Oops. I just noticed my mouse pointer got captured into the photos in this post. I was doing a demo earlier and needed to capture the mouse pointer, and I forgot to turn it off. I'm too lazy to remove them so I'll leave them as they are this time.