There are hundreds of USB flash drives available in the market today. The downside to most of these flash drives is that they contain a set amount of memory.  It’s up to the consumer to determine how much storage space they need and how much they are willing to spend.  It can be a bit of a disappointment if the amount of space you need is less than what you bought. 

Today, I will be reviewing SimpleTech’s Bonzai Upgradeable Flash Drive. The upgradeability of the product gives the consumer more flexibility and more of a long-term value.  The user has the capability to increase the storage capacity rather than buying a whole new separate flash drive.

The flash drive came in a clear plastic container.  The contents of the package included the drive itself, a USB extension cord, a neck band, a brochure, and 2 mini CD’s of the StorageSync backup and restore utility software (I’ll talk more about this later).

At the front of the drive, you will see the SimpleTech logo as well as the Bonzai name.  There is also a High-Speed USB logo which means that this drive is capable of USB 2.0.  It is also backwards compatible with USB 1.1.

USB 2.0 has theoretical speeds of 480Mbps which is 40 times faster than USB 1.1.  There is a small hole where you can put the included neck band if desired.  Right at the center is an LED which is used as a status light when the drive is in use.  The LED glows green when it is operational and powered.  The LED will blink if the drive is in use.  The back of the drive is where you see the housed SD card through the clear cover.  Lastly, the drive has a cap with an integrated clip.  Although it seems like the cap may fall off easily, it is held tight in place.  You can put the cap on either way.

When you open the cover, you can access the SD card.  This is no ordinary SD card.  It’s SimpleTech’s ProX SD memory card.  SimpleTech claims that the ProX SD memory card is 4 times faster than an ordinary SD card.  Although you can use an ordinary SD card, SimpleTech used a faster SD card to compete with the speed of flash drives.  An ordinary SD card is much slower.

The drive itself is average for its size, it’s neither large or extremely small compared to ones I’ve seen.  You will immediately notice that this drive has a wide base.  This is to accommodate for the size of the Secure Digital (SD) card housed within the device which is actually larger than flash memory on a circuit board.  Although, the drive has a wide base, it is thin.  This is to allow the drive to be placed in parallel with another device when there are two USB ports right next to each other.

I checked to see if the drive would fit in different USB configurations.  First I tested it with two vertical USB ports.  Both the drive and another USB device fit perfectly fine.  In a computer case where the USB ports are horizontal next to each other, you might have a problem with the width of the drive.  I was not able to fit another device because the drive obstructed the opening of the USB port.

In order to test the drive, I used SiSoftware Sandra’s removable/flash benchmark to determine the speeds of the drive.  The test results showed that it was one of the faster drives when compared with devices such as the Lexar JumpDrive, Sony Micro Vault or the Kingston Data Traveller.  The contender against SimpleTech’s flash drive was M-System’s DiskOnKey.  Although the DiskOnKey was much faster when working with very small files in the range of 512B to 256KB, SimpleTech’s flash drive was able to catch up when dealing with large files 2MB and above.  Sandra’s benchmark resulted in an 8.5MB/s read speed and close to a 4MB/s write speed.  Overall, I was very impressed with SimpleTech’s drive considering it was using an SD card.

Next, I used HD Tach to test its sequential and random access read speeds.  The drive performed admirably at an even 9MB/s.

Equipped with a stopwatch, I decided to perform some real world tests.  With a total of 150MB, I took a folder filled with MP3’s and copied it onto the flash drive.  It was able to complete the transfer in approximately 27 seconds.

As mentioned before, there is StorageSync software which is included with the drive.  I found the program to offer a lot of features such as encryption and you can also choose how many old backup copies to keep.  Keep in mind that you can only backup the amount of files that can fit on the drive.  In addition to backup, you can also synchronize with a folder on your hard drive.  This is great for folders where you keep your documents or emails.  I think the StorageSync software is an excellent software package with the device.  On the CD, there is also a trial version of the PhotoRescue software.  Although the software sounds like it’s meant for pictures only, it’s used to recover data on different mediums such as SD cards, MMC cards, CF cards, etc.  Some might ask, how can you lose data on those kinds of memory?  I do remember a time, where I did pull out a flash drive prematurely rather than clicking on the device icon in the bottom-right system tray and stopping the device.

I found SimpleTech’s Bonzai USB flash drive to be an excellent performer.  Currently retailing at approximately $87 it certainly is a reasonable price.  I would like to see SimpleTech include some kind of locking mechanism software for the device since it seems to be starting to be standard on other flash drives.  Whether you want upgradeability in a drive depends on the price and speeds of SD cards.   If you happen to have a lot of SD cards lying around the house, then I would recommend this flash drive.  When I looked at SimpleTech’s website for an SD card, a regular 512MB SD card was $147.  Considering that you can buy a Sandisk Cruzer 512MB flash disk for $129, the upgradeability is questionable since an integrated flash memory is cheaper.  Nevertheless, SimpleTech’s Bonzai upgradeable flash drive is a worthy flash drive for your pocket.