HandyDrive fits on a keychain

by Dennis Sellers, MacCentral

Earlier this week, Sony announced its Micro Vault USB-based storage media device. However, memory specialists Apacer also make a USB flash device called HandyDrive that's small enough to attach to a keychain.

The device is cross platform, needs no external power supply (it draws power from the UBS port), and doesn't need a driver for Mac OS 8.6 and higher, Windows ME/2000, and Linux 2.4.0 or higher. The transfer rate is up to 12Mbits/second and the HandyDrive has a write-protection switch.

Apacer says the drive offers data retention of up to 10 years and 1,000,000 erase cycles. The read speed is 750KB/second and the write speed is 450KB/second and it's shock resistant. Prices start at US$45 for a 16MB HandyDrive. (Thanks to MacCentral reader John Droz Jr. for the heads-up on this item.)