The reign of the floppy disk is finally coming to an end. 3.5" diskettes have been around forever and while they have had a good run, their physical size, minute storage capacity and dreadfully slow access times are a constant reminder that they are a thing of the past. Even rewritable CDs can be a bit of a pain these days. With their large size and delicate surface that needs to be protected, many people have been looking for other methods of portable storage. USB drives, also known as thumb drives, aren’t anything new but have recently been given a lot of attention from manufacturers and consumers alike. The first generation of USB drives offered a very nice portable solution that you could simply toss in your pocket, but they were still relatively limited in their capacities and were quite costly. As of late, manufacturers have been revising their drives and offering more affordable solutions. Today you can find thumb drives in capacities up to 2 GB and others that are literally smaller than your thumb!

Last week we took a look at Corsair’s entry into the USB drive market and were extremely pleased with their offering. Today we will be examining Crucial’s latest version of their popular ‘Gizmo!’ thumb drive. The first Gizmo, as most other drives at the time, was a bit bulky and didn’t support the faster USB 2.0 speeds. The Gizmo we will be checking out today is Crucial’s third revision of the drive which has become very well known for its extremely small size.