Traxdata EZ Drive USB 2.0 Flash Drive - Twister 512MB

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Once more Traxdata was kind enough to provide us with one of their USB Flash Memory Sticks. This time the Company provided us with the TRAXDATA EZ Drive^TM USB 2.0 Flash Drive '“ Twister (dragon Style), a very stylish and small 512MB USB-Stick. Read here what we have to say about this device. 

Company information:

Let us take a look at some of the company information.

Traxdata

The reliable brand

In
2001, the RITEK Corporation decided to market the Traxdata brand throughout
Europe, Africa and the Middle East. At that time, the product portfolio only
consisted of CD and DVD media and accessories, but in the past years Traxdata
has expanded its range with flash memory products to offer a complete and
reliable portfolio in storage solutions.

The current portfolio of products includes recordable/rewritable CD and DVD media and flash memory products. However, the search is always on for new and innovative improvements or additions to the range. This genuine commitment to innovation has resulted in a state-of-the-art Research and Development centre being created where the most advanced research equipment and laboratories in the optical, electronic and chemical fields are operated by leading R&D teams.

Traxdata is committed to providing easy digital solutions to everyone whether at home, in the office or on the move. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, Traxdata's wide range of products has something reliable to offer and to cover all digital storage needs.
Traxdata is the brand to rely on for all digital storage needs.

For 2005/2006 the Traxdata brand was the number 2 brand in Europe for DVD media products. 

Specifications:

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The official listed specification of this drive was found on the Traxdata website:

Traxdata EZ Drive™ Twister Limited Edition '“ Dragon Style

USB flash memory sticks have to be fast and reliable '“ but do they all have to look the same? Not any more. Traxdata rocks the market with the brand new EZ Drive™ Twister Limited Editions, an extremely safe and stylish way to protect and transport your documents. While traveling, the EZ Drive™ Twister's USB 2.0 connector rests safe and sound within the device, but it becomes easily accessible with a little twist. The EZ Drive™ Twister Limited Editions feature unique and innovative designs, which will only be available for a short time, turning the storage device into a real collectable.

One of the first designs is the "Dragon Style". This unique USB storage device posseses a definite Asian twist; its vivid Asian characters stand for Fly and Fast which the EZ Drive™ Twister 'Dragon style" definitely is.

Features

• Compliant to the USB 2.0 specification
• Storage capacities: 128MB, 256MB and 512MB
• Supports PC Windows 98SE/2000/Me/XP; Mac OS 8.6 and above
• Plug & Play USB connection, no additional power required
• Supports USB-HDD booting
• Built-in Write-Protect switch
• Optional DiskSafe security software
• Up to 10 years data retention
• Memory chip write cycle up to 100,000 times

What's inside the package?

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In this section we will take a look at what the USB 2.0 Flash drive came shipped with.

Front

Back

Traxdata EZ Drive™ Twister Dragon Style came without any additional components

Twisted

Open

Side with write protection switch and back

On the next page we will take a look at the test machine, the software, installation…………

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Test machine and Software:

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For this review we will use two different computers with the following configuration:

Hardware PC 1:

• Processor '“ AMD Athlon XP 2200+
• RAM '“ 512 MB DDR 400; Infineon
• Motherboard '“ ASRock K7S8X
• Graphics Card '“ Gainward GeForce 440MX; 128mb RAM
• Sound '“ RealTek AC97 Integrated Digital Audio
• Hard Disk '“ Samsung SV0802N 80GB; Western Digital WD 30 00JB 300GB and 30GB Western Digital ST 330621A (USB 2.0)
• Optical Drives '“ Lite-On SHM-165P6S; NEC 3540A; BTC 1108 IM

Hardware PC 2:

• Processor '“ AMD Athlon 64 3800+
• RAM '“ 1024 MB DDR 400; Infineon
• Motherboard '“ FUJITSU SIEMENS D2030-A1
• Graphics Card '“ NVIDIA GeForce 6200 LE
• Sound '“ RealTek AC97 Integrated Digital Audio
• Hard Disk '“ SAMSUNG SP2504C SCSI Disk Device (233GB)
• Optical Drives '“ SONY DVD RW DW-Q120A

Testing Software:

For our tests we decided to use the following programs:

• SiSoft Sandra 2007
• HD Tune 2.52

Installation and Usage:

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Installation

The installation of the drive is as easy as possible, it doesn't need any additional power connection and like all other USB Flash memory sticks, this one is also fully Windows 2000/XP Plug & Play compatible. This means the stick can easily be installed, just by putting it into a free USB slot of your PC. Only Windows 98 systems require the installation of an additional driver which can be found on the stick itself or downloaded from the Traxdata website.

Once installed, the device is detected as a removable device and it's ready for use immediately after installation.

My Computer

EZ Drive Twister properties window

In device manager we can find the device in the section drives, detected as Ut161 USB2FlashStorage USB Device.

Usage and features: 

Because of its small size, the size of the EZ Drive Twister is comparable to the size of a regular cigarette lighter, and the unit is very comfortable to transport and handle. The drive itself is black with blue and white Asian characters on it, so we can say that it has a very stylish design. Compared to many other drives the USB-connector is not protected with a cap you might loose, rather we have to twist to make the connector appear. Compared to our previous tested EZ Drive Pro, this unit comes without any additional components, such as USB cable and strap. Therefore this drive includes a Belt Clip on the back. On the side of the drive we can also find the small write-protection switch of the drive which is, because of its size, without the help of a pin or needle very hard to switch.

The usage of the drive is as simple as the installation itself. Once installed, you can handle it in the same way like conventional hard disks. Of course, it's not as fast but due to its USB 2.0 hi-speed connector you can do almost anything you like, from storing your documents or pictures to storage and playback of your favorite music and video files.

Once you have the drive connected and you are opening the drive in My Computer, you will quickly find that there is already data stored on drive.

Besides the user manual and the Windows 98 driver you will also find a folder called AP, this folder includes a format and security software which enables you to create a secure/password protected area on the stick, but more on this feature later in this review.

Another very interesting and in some cases very welcome feature of this device is its USB-HDD boot feature. This means nothing else other than that you can store an operating system on it and boot from the drive. The purpose of this feature is not to replace the computer installed OS, it is more useful for troubleshooting by the use of an 'on the stick" installed small Linux distribution or Windows PE.     

On the next page we will take a look at the test security features of the drives…………

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Format and
Security:

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If you are one of those persons
who often transport very sensitive data, which shouldn't be accessible by any
person who finds the drive after or before you lost it, this drive offers a very
easy and fast way to create a secure and safe area on the drive. For this
purpose, there is no more to do than to open the, preferably before on the hard
disk saved, USB Flash Disk Format Tool.

Once opened, the tool offers us
the following functions.

• Partition
• Security
• Configuration

A simple click onto the Start
Format button would quick format the drive without the creation of a secure
area. To enable this feature we need to switch to the Security Tab and set a
password. Note: The drive in some pictures appears as USBest USB2Flashstorage
because the pictures were taken after a recovery

Once the password is set, we can
switch back to the partition tab and define the secure area. The size of the
secure area can be set to almost every possible value. There is just a minimum
of 3 MB that needs to be left as public area.

Back on the Partition tab, all we
need to do is to hit the Start Format button. After a few seconds the stick is
formatted and the secure area is set. Now the secure area can be accessed by the
use of the USB Flash Disk Login Tool, which has been created in the public area
of the drive.

After the input of the password
and clicking onto the Unlock button the secure area is accessible and we can put
our 'sensitive" data into it. Now a small icon in the task bar indicates us that
secure mode is enabled.

After finishing our work in the
safe area, we can easily lock the drive by just right-clicking onto the icon and
selecting close.

The tab we left out until now is
the Configuration tab, this one is nothing specia. Here we can just define if we
want a quick or a full format of the drive. Please note that a full format is
not possible when you want to create a secure area on the drive.

Alternatively, the entire drive
can be formatted by the use of the in Windows integrated tool too, but here it's
not possible to create a secure area on the drive.

Now let's continue
with testing the drive's performance…………

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The Combined Index score represents the
overall performance of the drive and it is based on the average of the combined
indices of the 5 in the above table shown file size transfer tests. These
results include write, read and delete tests for each file size. The endurance
factor is the average performance (sequential write) value divided by the lowest
performance (high-stress same block re-write) value and represents the life
expectance of the drive. The drive was tested several times during the last
month and in the table you can see the results when the device was new and after
one month of use. The test on the Athlon 64 system was performed after the drive
has been used for about two weeks. It is also said that the combined index for
the device, depending on the conditions, swayed from approximately 850 to 1150.
So, overall we can say that the performance is similar, on both used computers.

Tests	EZ Drive Twister Dragon
	Athlon XP	Athlon 64
Test File Size :	432MB	364MB
File Fragments	1	1
Buffered Read	12 MB/s	13 MB/s
Sequential Read	11 MB/s	12 MB/s
Random Read	8 MB/s	9 MB/s
Buffered Write	2203 kB/s	4559 kB/s
Sequential Write	4306 kB/s	4187 kB/s
Random Write	3512 kB/s	3756 kB/s
Random Access	31 ms	29 ms
Drive Index	9 MB/s	9 MB/s

The Sandra file system benchmark only
shows a difference in the 'Buffered Write test". Here the drive was more than
two times faster when the test was performed by the use of the Athlon 64
system. 

HD Tune
2.52

The HD Tune benchmark shows almost
equal results on both systems. The only difference can be found for the CPU
usage, here the Athlon XP system requires approximately twice as much CPU
recourses than the Athlon 64 system.

HD Tach RW 3.0.1.0

The HD Tach RW results for sequential
read/write and the random access time are quite similar to the results of the
file system benchmark done by Sandra 2007.

Now, all the important tests are done
and we keep our attention on another topic which is probably of interest for
some of you.

What can I do when my stick is
broken….

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Recovery:

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Of course we all hope that it wouldn't be necessary to find
a way to recover a 'broken" USB-Stick, but this appears to be a big problem for
many users around the world and this happened also to us. After approximately
two weeks of daily use the stick has been detected as write protected from one
moment to the other and we weren't able to write data on it or format it. We
can't tell for sure what caused this problem but we assume that the problem was
caused when Sandra stopped its work and we had to quit the program by the use of the three magic Windows keys. However, the fact is that the problem appeared and that we had to find a way to recover our USB-Stick.

During our searches on the internet we found some possible ways to solve this problem and we have posted some of these possible solutions in this thread in our Flash memory forum. There isn't a unique method to solve such problems and it isn't guaranteed that a method which worked for one person works for another to, even for people with the same stick and a similar problem.

Here we will show you the solution which worked for us (again, it isn't a must that it works for you too). The tool which worked for us is called Recovery_1002 and can be found on the Trancendusa website. It's a very simple and easy to use tool. Here a short explanation on how to use it.

After the stick has been connected and the tool has been opened the following screen appears.

We can find some information about the device, such as name, drive letter and size. Here it is noted that the device was detected as Ut161 USB2FlashStorage USB Device before and when the problems appeared first the device was detected as USBest USB2FlashStorage device from one moment to the other. Anyway, for us this doesn't matter since the Ut161 controller is produced by USBest. Besides this information we can decide if we like to perform a fast repair or a complete repair.

After a click onto the repair button, the process starts.

Once finished, you just have to disconnect the device and after connecting the device again you will find that all the previously saved data on the stick been lost but all should work again. You may have to reformat the stick if you would like to use a different file system.

Now let's move to the conclusion…..

Positive:

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• Easy Installation
• Very easy to use
• Security options
• Good design
• Good performance
• Good support via the Traxdata website (Drivers, Manual, Security Software)
• Write protection switch

Negative:

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• Too small write protection switch
• Relative high random access time

Conclusion:

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As you can see above in the positives and
negatives, there is not much negative to say about this drive and regarding the
protection switch, we must add that this is not a real negative point but it's
included and because of this we find that it should be possible to use it
without the help of any needles and pins. Also we find many other drives with
relative access times of four milliseconds and lower, so we find this point also
something negative, even when many will not notice any difference to other
devices during the daily use.

Else, the Traxdata EZ Drive Twister '“ Limited Edition (Dragon Style) is a very well designed and well performing drive which is not only easy to use but also includes some security features that are of interest in case you don't want to have your data accessible by other persons.

Its small dimensions make it easy to connect the drive to almost every USB-connector of a PC and its belt clip is also a very nice and for many people a useful addition.

Over all we can say: The EZ Drive Twister '“ Limited Edition is a really successful product. Well done Traxdata.

You may comment on this review in this thread in our new Flash Memory forum.

By using our CD Freaks price grabber feature we didn't find the Traxdata EZ Drive Twister listed and at getprice the 256MB version of the drive is listed at € 14.00.