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Flash Drive Label – For Professionals and Businesses

Sticky labels are not a professional solution to label flash drives. Today we look at an alternative for labeling a flash drive which suits the demands of a business and/or professional.

There is a clear difference between labeling your flash drive because of personal use and the need to label a flash drive which is sold, shipped or mailed to a paying customer.

A common method to label a flash drive is with a sticky label applied to the outside of the flash drive, or a paper merchandise tag with some notes about the contents hanging from the lanyard loop. Albeit a good method for a personal flash drive, not the most professional or durable flash drive label tag when sold as a commercial product.

It is a common requirement from a company to include more information about the contents of a flash drive than what the space of a sticky label or tag will allow. In addition, the durability of said label should withstand environmental conditions which surpass the limits of a merchandise tag. Examples include:

  • Detailed instructions for how the flash drive should be used
  • Software or firmware version information (longer than sticky label space)
  • Medical compliance information about the contents
  • Audit tracking of ownership / possession (longer than sticky label space)

From the examples above, the question becomes:

What flash drive label can be used which is professional looking while having the durability and space needed to print the information required?

The best flash drive label we have found is the plastic credit card sized label offered by Nexcopy.

The CC USB Label is a white PVC plastic product which is 85mm wide by 54mm tall and 0.75mm thick with a total weight of 4 grams. The CC USB Label is printable on both sides and includes a lanyard for connecting to a USB flash drive.

The CC USB Label accepts full color print and with a white background, each color is vibrant and great contrast for users to easily read the printed information. Using an eco-solvent printer, the ink is permanent and water proof. The information printed will last in various weather conditions and environmental conditions.

Nexcopy offers their eco-solvent LOGO-EZ printer for in-house production. Nexcopy also offers print services for those not wanting to invest in a flatbed eco-solvent printer.

The credit card size and the light weight of the card make it a perfect complement as a flash drive label. With double sided print capability, a company has a great deal of space to print the information required for their product.

From the image below, one can see the flash drive label is ideal for printed bar codes for scanning during product fulfillment, shipping and receiving. Printing a more precise image like a QR code could improve user experience, such as streamlining a product registration process or direct landing page for a how-to video for product instruction.

flash drive label

The plastic PVC material is ideal for printing color logos and highlighting specific information. Having the flexibility for color print lends itself to emphasizing certain bits of information the manufacturer wants the end-user to notice.

In addition, the CC USB Label allows custom branding to match the requirements from the marketing department to ensure branding compliance is matched – getting stuck with black only printed sticky labels or merchandise tags decrease the overall perceived value of the product and could fall out of compliance of a company’s marketing guidelines.

Although some of this information sounds overkill for a flash drive label, keep in mind this solution is designed for a business or professional who might be required to provide very detailed labels for the product in which the flash drive is associated with.

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Kingston Road Map for USB 3.0

Kingston LogoThe Intel based standard for USB 3.0 was announced nearly 2 years ago and since then, products have slowly trickled in to the market place. Of course there is a cycle to progress…you can’t get peripherals until you have controllers [main stream now] and once you get controllers you expand out to peripherals. That being said, Kingston, one of the largest memory manufacturers on earth, has launched a fairly detailed road map for USB 3.0 products. Kingston was amongst the first to announce USB 3.0 flash drives into retail under the DataTraveler Ultimate 3.0 drive and HyperX MAX 3.0 external USB hard drive – both launched earlier in 2010. And now, as the first product on their roadmap for the year, have introduced the DataTraveler HyperX 3.0, which will serve as their flagship model and be part of the HyperXperience product line, a family of high-performance Kingston Flash products that will include SSDs, USBs and flash memory cards. Kingston made the announcement at CES but doesn’t expect to release the less expesnive USB 3.0 flash drives until Q2, 2011 under the DataTraveller DTU30 brand and will include capacities ranging from 16GB to 64GB. Continue Reading

Do You Really Need 64GB USB Drives?

I can honestly say, today, no I don’t.  But that doesn’t mean you don’t.  Today we found the Kingston 64GB drive on sale for $147.  That’s about $72 off the regular price.

64GB drive

The company line: Kingston’s new DataTraveler® 200 USB Flash drive is ideal for storing and transferring digital images and presentations and transporting all kinds of data. With capacities up to 128GB, the DataTraveler 200 features password protection via Password Traveler software, which allows you to create and access a password-protected, secure area of the drive called a “Privacy Zone.” DataTraveler 200 is ideal for those who need significant storage capacity and data protection in a sleek, durable design. With a capless design and enhanced with Windows ReadyBoostâ„¢,** the DataTraveler 200 is perfect for home or business. DataTraveler 200 is backed by legendary Kingston® reliability plus a five-year warranty and 24/7 tech support. Grab the GetUSB Dealz now. Continue Reading

GetUSB Dealz: 32GB Flash Drive Only $59

Wouldn’t it be nice to get 1GB of data storage for $1 on flash drives?  We are not there yet but getting close.  We are about $2 per GB for this 32GB Kingston DataTraveler.

c10 flash drive

It doesn’t come with the lifetime warranty we typically see, only a 5 year one…but chances are you’ll lose it before then anyway. The c10 drive comes in four colors [Red, Yellow, Blue, Green] and has a full cap design to protect the entire stick.  No word on performance, but the typical flash drive has a write speed of 5.5MB/s and a read speed of 15 MB/s, again not official just our experience speaking here. Just 5 years ago I had a laptop with a 40GB hard drive, now we have flash drives just about as big and much less expensive.  This deal is for a limited time at buy.com and has a normal price of $90. Continue Reading

Kingston With Secure Flash Drive Issues

It’s been all over the blogs the last couple of days regarding Kingston and their security issues.  They have been tight lipped about exactly what makes the device vulnerable and with specific information it’s hard to gauge just how hard it would be for someone to crack it.

Kingston secure flash drive

I don’t think the typical user who keeps their personal information secure with this drive [in the event it’s lost] has much to worry about, but the government has purchased plenty of units and that’s clearly a concern.  The list of drives include Data Traveler BlackBox, the Data Traveler Secure – Privacy Edition, and the Data Traveler Elite – Privacy Edition.  Again, a typical computer user probably doesn’t have the tools or skills to unlock the device, but a professional would. My guess is the IC controller chip which runs the AES 256 encryption is at fault here and someone has figured out how to hack the machine code and disable the encryption, but that’s just my educated guess being in the industry. PC World did a good write up about the statement and interesting perspective on the whole situation. Continue Reading

GetUSB Dealz: Kingston 4GB DataTraveler Only $10

Buy.com has a very good special going right now.  The Kingston 4GB DataTraveler for only $10.  What’s even better – buy in bulk as your limit is 100 units.  Shipping is also free within the US.

Kingston DataTraveler

Sleek, practical, and attractively designed, the affordable DataTraveler 120 serves the needs of the budget conscious user as well as those looking for significant storage capacity in a lightweight, compact design. DataTraveler 120 features a retractable USB connector for ease of use and safe housing and is available in 4GB (lime green), 8GB (orange), 16GB (light blue), and 32GB (gray). DataTraveler 120 is available for co-logo. Backed by a five-year warranty, 24/7 tech support and legendary Kingston® reliability, DataTraveler 120 is a reliable, inexpensive solution for carrying digital files with you wherever your travels may take you. Grab your GetUSB Dealz now! Continue Reading

How Is A USB Stick Made – Video Of Kingston Factory

Do you wonder if a USB stick will drop below $2? I don’t think it ever will, and for several reasons. First, the bare cost of the Flash, Controller and case will keep the price much higher than it’s predecessor [CD/DVD] but also consider the millions of dollars needed in equipment just to make these things in bulk. So let’s find out how a USB stick is made…here is a behind-the-scenes video of the Kingston USB flash memory plant. With step-by-step video it’s an amazing process. Note: The narration is nothing close to an award winning voice over. Source: Engadget. Continue Reading

World’s Largest USB Stick: Kingston 128GB DataTraveler

The last time GetUSB.info did a post about the largest USB stick it was for the 64GB Transcend flash drive.  That little guy retailed at near $200, but that was also back in September of 2008. Two days ago, Kingston released their 128GB USB flash drive.  The Kingstong DataTraveler 200 is “now” the largest USB stick in the market.  128GBs.

largest USB stick

This guy retails for $546.  That is a very expensive drive when you compare it to the Western Digital Passports where Terabytes are under $300…but you can’t put a price tag on portability.  Or can you? There are no special features nor auto-backup software included in the bundle, just a simple drive with a ginormous capacity, a sliding cap, and password utility for extra security. Strangely enough, Kingston will only sell the 128GB version as a made to order process.  Go figure. Continue Reading

Windows Readyboost Blows

I’m just a blogger; have written about Readyboost; but never investigated it’s performance. I found an article today from PC World who took a closer look. Basically, it blows. “What is Readyboost you ask?” well it’s a feature of Vista that allows flash memory (like USB Sticks) to be used as additional RAM to boost PC performance.
vista readyboost benchmark
PC World took that claim and put it to the bench. First off, Microsoft indicates that only the best performing flash drives should be used, (3.5MBs per/sec reads and 2.5MBs per/sec writes) so although some web sites claim “use any extra flash drive for Readyboost,” that claim is a bunch of BS. Using the best performing drives from Kingston, Lexar and Ridata it was concluded the Readyboost did improve performance, but only by 4 to 6%. So unless you had a stop watch – BFD!  My Vista upgrade is going to wait. Continue Reading

The Next Generation of U3; a Microsoft Version

The announcement of Microsoft developing a UFD platform to replace U3 could turn into a similar battle we saw 25 years ago between VHS and Betamax.
microsoft u3
Major suppliers have already dropped the U3 platform because of high royalty fees (around 5%) to bundle less expensive software which does the same thing. As these suppliers, like Kingston and Memorex, begin to choose the alternate like Migo Software, a heated war could surface between flash drive manufacturers. Originally SanDisk partnered with M-Systems to develop the U3 solution, but as time went on, SanDisk bought out M-Systems and the evolution of U3 continues with this most recent partnership. Microsoft is developing the software platform and SanDisk will continue offering their hardware for a total solution (yes, it’s a hardware/software thing). In addition, SanDisk and Microsoft will bundle in the TrustedFlash security technology developed by SanDisk.
“The U3 platform was established with the vision of giving customers a consistent and portable computing experience. The existing 20,000 U3 software developers that joined us show the potential for smart flash memory devices,” said Yoram Cedar, executive vice president of the mobile business unit and corporate engineering at SanDisk.
“We expect this relationship with Microsoft will raise the overall experience for consumers given Microsoft’s unique software expertise, and grow the momentum given the large community of 3rd party companies capable of utilizing Microsoft’s technologies.”
The migration process for the 20,000 U3 developers is a straight forward and simple one – Microsoft puts the pressure back on you to make the migration. Microsoft did say there will be tools to ad in the process, but the bottom line is U3 developers better get cracking if they want to see the light-of-day come mid 2008. Continue Reading

Buffalo USB Card Reader (MCR-A28) – Supports 30 Card Formats

Tis the season for card readers…yesterday we had the latest from Kingston for the MobileLite announcement, now Buffalo introduces their latest line up – the MCR-A28 USB card reader.
Buffalo USB card reader
This USB card reader supports 30 card types and most notably the new SDHC and Memory Stick Pro format – which are not backward compatible with other card readers which previously supported SD and Memory Stick. Since the Kingston MobileLite is a 9 card reader focused on mobile memory cards, if you need something with a wider range of support YET still compact in size, the Buffalo USB card reader makes our short list. Continue Reading

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