OCZ ATV 2GB Flash Drive Review

Manufacturer’s Part Number: OCZUSBATV2G
Manufacturer Product Page: OCZ Technology | Products | Flash Media | OCZ ATV USB 2.0 Flash Drive
Price: $39.99 at NCIX
Warranty: Lifetime
Availability: Now



For many, many years the Floppy Disk had been the de facto standard for removable storage. In its day it was fast enough, durable enough and most importantly cheap enough for nearly everyone's needs. While in some aspects CDs & DVDs have replaced the floppy disk, neither optical disk format was durable enough to completely replace it. Even today most computers come standard with a Floppy Disk Drive and it really wasn’t until the advent of flash based re-recordable media that a true floppy disk alternative came into the limelight. Since then, flash drive or “thumb drives” have steadily increased in speed, have become cheaper and most importantly their storage capacity has also increased in leaps and bounds.

As little as seven years ago I paid well over $150 for a 64 megabyte flash drive. By today’s standards it was slow, clunky and had an extremely small amount of storage space. Today’s market is extremely competitive with every company trying to stand out from the crowd and while bigger capacity is a plus it is no longer the most important aspect of these drives. Once their sizes surpassed what could conceivably be “big enough” for most people, the flash drive manufacturers had to look for even more varied ways of distinguishing their products from those released by their competition. While they all differ in colour, the main trends seem to be towards either “micro drives” which can be as thin as a credit card and as small as your thumb, or extremely durable “ruggedized” drives.

This latter market niche calls for a body that is bigger than the rest and must be capable of protecting your data under the most extreme circumstances. One of the more popular choices is marketed by OCZ. OCZ is well known in the enthusiast community as they consistently produce some of the most elegant and well recognized products available to the general public. Today we will be looking at their latest “ruggedized” mainstream flash drive offering, the “ATV”.

The ATV was introduced a few months ago as a product that you could take anywhere with you while feeling safe that it would no loose your data if you dropped it in a lake or it took a tumble out of your third floor window. It comes with OCZ's Lifetime Warranty and promises high speed with a price that is pretty easy to swallow.