The Next Big [Make That Small] Idea In Solid-State - Hardware Review - Evaluation

Computer Technology Review, May, 2001 by Hal Glatzer

Woody Allen once said: "Success is mainly a matter of showing up." But in the storage industry, that's rarely enough.

It's practically a cliche that most new storage technologies that are billed as "solutions" are brought to market before anybody has identified the problems they're supposed to solve. But surely there must be some counter-examples: products that not only solve existing problems but also generate new ideas for applications.

I'm holding what may be one of them right now (actually, I'm setting it back down on my desk, because I need both hands to type). It's shaped like a faucet-handle, about four inches long and an inch wide, with rounded edges. Inside is a NAND flash-memory chip and supporting firmware. A protective external sheath terminates in both a pocket-clip, like a pen, and a key ring: hence the product's moniker-DiskOnKey--from M-Systems. Pull off the sheath and it terminates in a USB connector.

I can hear you groan. Plug-in storage via USB is far from an original concept. Most manufacturers of external storage devices are phasing out parallelport interfaces in favor of USB, which offers faster throughput and (in most cases) can trigger automatic self-configuration.

But this is one of the first USB devices to come to market that's entirely solid-state, and certainly the first to carry its own drivers on board (for Mac 9.0 and higher, and for Windows 2000 and Windows Me and above). You can download drivers for earlier OSs, such as Win 98/2nd ed., from www.diskonkey.com, which I did. DiskOnKey then shows up as the next available drive-letter in your system, emulating a disk drive in every way.

M-Systems offers 8MB, 16MB, and 32MB versions that retail for about $50, $70, and $100, respectively. The chips are made to order by Epson, at a lab in Oregon; a plant in Taiwan is due to come on line this year; and M-Systems itself is headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel. (Talk about promoting international trade!)

DiskOnKey doesn't need a battery, since NAND chips retain recorded data without refreshment. All of its power demands for reading and writing are met by the host when it's plugged into a computer's USB port. The spec-sheet claims a top data transfer rate of "near" 1MB/sec, which--even if it's not so "near" in practice - is fast enough for most applications.

So, what applications is it good for? Wait a second. There's more you should know.

M-Systems is not a start-up, and it has real experience in this particular field: it's been making solid-state disk-emulators for more than ten years. Those fast (albeit expensive) devices are mounted in hightraffic servers and industrial-strength computer platforms that would be I/O-bound if they had to rely exclusively on rotating memories.

Thus, DiskOnKey is conceptually an extension of M-Systems' product line; meaning that its marketing people started with some idea of what people might actually do with it. And having been in the business of supplying embedded devices, they quite naturally launched DiskOnKey by inking OEM deals. IBM (no less) is already private-labeling DiskOnKey as "Memory Key;" and Dell is now starting to offer it as a follow-on product.

Vendors and resellers are expected to promote DiskOnKey by emphasizing its portability--not only in the sense of its small-physical size, but (given the near-ubiquity of USB ports in new computers) in the way that it can be used to swap files between otherwise dissimilar platforms. Anyone who works with both a laptop and a desktop can see a useful app right there, since it's big enough to hold a briefcase-full of word-processed documents or spreadsheets, or a modest-scale slide-show of digital pictures.

Of course a 650MB CD-R disk is enormously more capacious and--the drive notwithstanding--an order of magnitude cheaper. But it's also physically larger, somewhat more fragile, and an order of magnitude slower. And while rental computers, such as those in hotel business centers, typically have CD-ROM readers, few come with CD-RW recorders. But they all have USB ports. Use a DiskOnKey and you can work up a PowerPoint presentation on the road, yet still carry it with you. Students can swap files between home PCs and Macs at school. Travellers can carry eBooks in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format to read on their laptops.

How about using DiskOnKey as a "token" for security? With the right software aboard, even a 4MB DiskOnKey (M-Systems is already making them, on special-order) can lock or unlock access to specific files or drives, to a computer or to a whole network.

If DiskOnKey doesn't set the world on fire, at least its developers are "clear on the concept": industry-standard capacity-points in a very practical package design, and at a fair price too. Until the MSRP for solid-state storage approaches $1/MB (maybe by 2003), products like this--or like digital "film" for digital cameras--will remain luxury goods.