Flash Drive News

We recently completed another round of investigative work on “offers” we’ve either seen, heard or been asked about from the multiple companies who offer flash drives as a product line. We must admit, we had a great time with many chuckles and even some perplexed looks from the staff. Surprisingly enough, a host of  “offers” we found online turned out to not really be offers or were not honored as the print on the website promised or else they simply weren’t true.

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We often get asked as much about the flash drives of tomorrow as we do about the drives of today.  At CFgear we love to talk USB, and we think these questions are awesome!  It means our customers are trying to ensure their purchase of CFgear flash drives will stand the technology test of time for decades to come.  Did you know that USB flash drives are already more than a decade old!  However, there have been some exciting announcements recently to ensure that flash drive technology remains a key opportunity in the data storage, file sharing and educational markets for the next decade and beyond.

USB 3.0 has been an industry buzz for the last six months or so.  Why?  Here a few reasons if you are not familiar with flash drives or USB 2.0/3.0 lingo! continue

One of the fun activities we get to participate in about once per month at CFgear is quality testing. We bring in drives from varied sources including vendors, major retailers, online e-commerce sites and nearly anyone we can find who is in the business of marketing flash drives. We buy across all price points, types and shapes, including custom flash drives.

In June we focused on custom Class B+C or Tier 2+3 flash drives and compared them with what we offer. We run tests on speed, durability and data retention. Although we can’t do cool time elapsed videos, we do our best to simulate both drives in our duplication racks to keep the testing equal. We’ll detail what we found in a later discussion, but felt it was important to first discuss the different classes or categories that exist for flash drives so here is a basic breakdown. continue

Thanks to the escalated demand by Apple for more flash memory chips, there is a serious shortage of availability for the memory chips also used in manufacturing flash drives. With decreased availability comes an increase in prices charged by overseas factories for the core parts used in making USB flash drives. continue