USB Flash thumb drives have REALLY matured since they were introduced back in '98. No longer are these handy little storage devices offered in just 8MB and 16MB sizes... Nowdays 128MB seems to be the starting range all the way up to a whopping 2GB+ all on a device that is literally about the size of your thumb. Many of these little storage wonders include some pretty unique and handy utilities to use with them including high level encryption for your files, portable websurfing apps, and even the ability to include biometrics in the unit itself. Isn't technology great? One of the more recent trends with USB Flash Drives are that they are made transfer faster. Many Flash drives have been USB 2 capable for some time but only transferred files at a mediocre speed closer to USB 1.1 rates.

This is where the OCZ Rally comes in... The USB Flash Drive I have for review today is OCZ Technology's 2GB Rally High Performance USB 2.0 (Dual Channel) Flash Memory Drive. Quite a title, eh? Two things stood out to me when I first looked at the product package for the Rally drive. First of all, 2 GB is an impressive amount of data to jam into such a tiny device... Second, did that say Dual Channel? Dual Channel would hint that this drive can double the performance of a regular Flash drive which seems like a perfect feature to pair with such a large flash drive lest you fall asleep waiting for your files to copy over. Let's give the OCZ Rally the PimpRig once over and see what it'll do.

Package

The unit comes bundled in a nice little blister pack which includes all of the basic items you would need to use the drive. The drive itself, USB extension cable, lanyard, and ring for attaching the drive to a keyring. The lanyard is about 1 1/2 feet long and has a nice little detachable clip on it. I decided to use the lanyard since teh drive is so small the white lanyard can help me to prevent misplacing the drive. A habit I am prone to repeat until my dying day I am afraid. :) Notice that the package doesn't come with any fancy software bundle.

The Rally Drive

Before the Rally drive I had been using a 512MB USB Drive from X-Micro. I thought my previous drive was pretty small but the Rally drive is even smaller and has about 4 times the space on it. The drive casing is metal and feels to be made of aluminum (the drive is very cool to the touch and practically weightless). The drive cap is made of the same metal. On the opposite end of the drive from the cap is a frosted plastic piece with a loop hole for attaching the lanyard or keyring loop; This frosted piece also lights up blue when in use. One feature that the X-Micro had that I liked was the write-protect slider on the side which you can use to make your files unwritable. The OCZ Rally is simply a compact, fast USB drive with nothing extra.