JMTek USBDrive Professional Review

 

Floppies suck. The new generation of users will have key-chain sized devices that allow them to store files at transfer rates never matched by a floppy.

Better technology has lead into many advances. Particularly USB 1.1 and USB 2.0. The later standard allows for up to 480 Mbps. Sooner or later you will be able to boot your computer up from your USB drive, even possibly flashing your BIOS from a USB key drive.  Another major advantage is that USB drives are small and portable.

Today we are taking a look at the JMTek USBDrive Professional.

Yellow LED in the top right corner

The JMTek USBDrive Professional that we are looking at today sports a capacity of 16MB of storage space.

The unit comes packaged within a plastic zip-lock entitled Professional 16MB. Inside contains the following:

As you can see the unit is very compact and in comparison to the DiskOnKey Pro, is smaller. It sports a metallic colored accent on the top and bottom faces of the unit. I noticed that the cap on the JMTek USBDrive Professional is quite tight and needs to be taken out with some force. The unit was missing a 3" USB extension cable for an unknown reason.

Specs

The JMTek USBDrive Professional is operated out of USB 1.1 spec; therefore it lacks the speed of a USB 2.0 USB flash drive.

Installation

For the most part, you don’t really need to install the drivers because Windows automatically picks it up as a generic USB device. For Windows 98 users, you have to use the driver CD which is included.

The drive actually contains 12MB of space rather than the 16MB advertised. This is true because the other 4MB of space is for the included security programs on the drive itself. There is a USB backup program, USB lock program, USB mail program, and USB secure program that allow you to successfully keep your data safe without anyone retrieving your vital information. The "USB-SecureZip" allows you to compress and decompress files that you have dragged in. From there, they are automatically encrypted and password protected. If you don’t see a need for it, you can simply delete it off the drive.

Applications (Update)

Here are the applications that the JMTek USBDrive Professional houses.

First up the "USB-Backup" program.  This program allows you (the user) to backup files either to or from the USB drive after every computer use.  All you have to do is select the files you want backed up and press "Backup Now".

Second up is USB-Lock.  USB-Lock is designed to protect and secure any Windows based PC from unauthorized users. What is unique about this program is that you have the ability of locking up the computer by removing the USBDrive or unlocking by placing the drive back in the computer.  Handy for people who don't want others snooping around.

You have many more choices.

The USB-Mail program allows you to gain access to your e-mail through your USBDrive anywhere at anytime.

The program is very useful.  Bottom left is your accounts already shown and you can import the ones you want to use.  From there, you can start retrieving.

Lastly, the USB-Secure allows you to make a password and compress files you copy to the drive.

Testing

Since this drive is a 16MB version, I could not do any write/read tests in Sisoft Sandra. I will compare transfer times of a 15MB worth of data between the DiskOnKey Pro and the JMTek USBDrive Professional.

Update: The same test system was used.

DiskOnKey Pro: 14 seconds

JMTek USBDrive Professional: 21 seconds

Conclusion

The JMTek USBDrive Professional is a solid product. It is very small, light and features programs that are useful to your data.  It makes the drive even more attractive to buy.   As the JMTek USBDrive Professional is a USB 1.1 product, it suffers transfer times. Within all these points, the JMTek USBDrive Professional is a solid USB Drive to have. They come in a variety of storage sizes from 16MB to 1GB of space.

I rate the 16MB JMTek USBDrive Professional a…

7.5/10!

Pros and Cons

+ Small and includes a neck strap
+ Great security programs!
- Cap is tight and suffers from USB 1.1
- Missing 3" USB Extension Cable

Let me thank Julie from JMTek for making this review possible. Visit JMTek for more information.