10-3-00
David Schultz

• Product: VST/Smart Disk Ultra-Thin Drives (USB, FireWire, and Combo Drive)
• Company: VST/Smart Disk
• Web: www.vsttech.com
• Contact: sales@vsttech.com
• Category: Hardware peripheral; storage.
• Prices: $199 to $999 (see below).
• Requirements: Firewire and USB compatible Macs.
• Rating: 5 bites out of the Apple (highest rating).

It is not often that one's mouth waters at computer hardware. Apple, of course, as you all know, is the exception to this rule. Apple makes tools which are fun to use and look great to boot. Sure, a frying pan is just a tool too - - but it sure is nice to have a bright and new one to cook your eggs in. Likewise, a computer helps us master our environment, but it sure helps when one is well designed and spiffy looking too. VST/Smart Disk understands this.

While it may be rare to drool over computer hardware, it may be even be rarer to do so over something like a hard drive. I mean really, something cool with a name like "hard drive"? Well, VST/Smart Disk is making hard drives for the Mac which have that certain Mac something - - a coolness factor found in a combination of form and function anyone can appreciate. With Apple's attention to detail and design, VST/Smart Disk has come out with three models of hard drives which require towels for your watering mouths when you see them.

I am talking about the VST/Smart Disk "Ultra-Thin" line of drives. These slim drives are 3x5.5x7 inches in size and weigh only 6.5 ounces. Yes, they really are "pocket drives": They fit into your shirt or jacket pocket. They are smaller than a Zip disk drive and many times larger and more reliable. This makes them an ideal storage solution. Consider your options.

First of all, Steve Jobs has already ditched floppies. Enough said.

So without floppies where do you go? Zip drives have larger capacity but they can be notoriously unreliable; after so many read-writes the directory gets corrupted and you get the dreaded "This disk is unreadable on this machine. Would you like to format it?" "No!! All my stuff is on there!" you scream back. Zip drives are good for short-term storage solutions, as are Super Disks and Orb Drives.

But if you need more space for long-term storage solutions, and more reliability, then CD-RW drives provide the right solution. They are great for archiving and duplicating, but for backup the process is tedious. You may not have time to burn one, or don't want to burn or rewrite a new one every time your source files change. And except maybe for VST/Smart Disk's own CD-RW's they are too large to lug around.

Then you have web-based storage solutions with iDisk and ftp servers. But of course you have to log on and you may not have access to a connection every minute of the day. If the server crashes or is off-line then your stuff is out of reach.

The VST/Smart Disk Ultra-Thin drives can replace all of the above, and you can put them in your shirt pocket. They are small and light (a little longer than a deck of cards but just as high). They are also quiet - - they have no fans due to their heat-dispersing design. They have an energy-saving mode which means less stress on your Powerbook's battery. And with the new "VST Format 2.2" software that comes with them (see below for more) they are even more useful. And don't worry about durability - - they are rugged and tough (don't go dropping them though). These drives, simply put, are an absolute joy to use. And once you get one you'll be finding all kinds of ways to use it.

The three drives we received for review are the following (prices and specs, of course, are subject to change):

• The VST Ultra-Thin USB Drive (Black, Blueberry, Tangerine). They come in 4 GB ($179) and 6 GB ($199).
• The VST Ultra-Thin FireWire Drive (Graphite). These come in 3 ($199), 6 ($379), 10 ($449), 18 ($599) and 20 ($649),and 30 GB ($949), sizes. (These drives also come in the red-yellow style.)
• The VST Ultra-Thin USB/FireWire Combo Drive (Graphite). These come in 3 ($349), 6 ($449), 10 ($499), 20 ($699), and 30 GB ($999) sizes.

The durability, portability and reliability of these drives makes them a class by themselves in hard drives. You will use them like no other hard drive you own. In fact, because of their portability and size, you will find that you use them like a mega-floppy and you will realize, after time, that you haven't touched your Zip drive in a while.

Let me say a few words about model choice. We came down squarely in favor of the FireWire drive. It is a superb drive. The USB model is slower, of course, but you will notice this mostly with larger files. And because USB requires an AC adapter it is not as portable as the FireWire models. (Note: FireWire drives when daisy chained do require an AC adapter.) It is our considered judgment that FireWire is the future of storage and not USB; USB is fine for mice and joysticks, but for hard drives it will never come up to the FireWire standard. But the USB drive is a good choice for pre-FireWire Mac owners. The Combo drive is wonderful. You have more choices for connections with it obviously. We experienced no differences in speed between the straight FireWire and Combo FireWire drives. It is a good choice if you have a number of Macs, some with and some without FireWire ports. But for us, though, the FireWire drive captured our hearts.

How You'll Use Them

Basically, you'll use these drives like a case of floppies or pile of Zip drives which fit in the palm of your hand. I have a Power Mac G4/450 and a PowerBook (FireWire). I have two drives in the G4. I can backup the G4 to the other drive as well as boot from it if I have to. But I want the two machines to share files quickly. (I don't use File Sharing because the cable modem takes up the Ethernet port and it is slower than a drive.) I can use FireWire Target Disk Mode to get files from one machine to another, but this requires making the PowerBook unavailable, and there is the fact that Apple's implementation of FireWire on the Pismo is less than perfect. They are AirPorted so I can send myself files, but this is impractical for larger files. Enter the VST/Smart Disk Ultra-Thin Drives.

The FireWire compatible drives we looked at are the best choice for synching and backing up for serious users. The reason is simple: You don't need an external AC adapter. Because of this, and in combination with the drive's small form factor, the Ultra-Thin FireWire drive is extremely versatile as a storage extension solution.

This is how I use them. I have three M/M four pin IEEE 1394 cables. I have five FireWire ports on the G4 since I installed a KeySpan FireWire PCI card on it. So I have enough ports to leave two cables plugged in at all times. They are dedicated to the VST FireWire drive and the VST Combo drive (making a grand total of four drives I have hooked up to the G4). (The drives come with a cable, please note.) The Combo drive is hooked up at all times; the FireWire drive is the liaison drive between the G4 and the Pismo. All of these drives are hot-pluggable though not completely hot swappable - - you still have to drag the icon to the Trash to unmount them. I simply take the file I want to copy or backup, drag it to the VST disk's icon on the desktop, and it's quickly copied. I then drag the disk's icon to the Trash, unplug it, plug it into the Pismo (or visa versa), drag the file from the disk on onto a volume and I am done. It's like a 3 GB floppy. It is the easiest way to keep the two machines synched and to backup files that I have found.

If you use something like Synchronize! (which we will be reviewing in the future), and the VST drive you can backup, synch, or mirror two folders in moments. Just choose the destination folder and the master drive and set your synching options. Hit "Sync . . ." and it's off to the races! The spped of something like Synchronize! along with a VST FireWire drive means you'll have more time to get things done and spend less time backing up your stuff.

You can store tons of MP3s on these drives, video, and whole catalog of graphics, and all kinds of things which you need to take from one Mac to another. Like I said, the drives are mega-floppies in essence. as prices fall in drives and FireWire drives especially, why not get a few? Dedicate one to MP3s and one to video.

This is why I say the FireWire models are the best. They are fast, very fast. They tested faster than their USB counter-parts. Sure, they are not native 1394, they use bridge technology and drivers, but they are fast. We got reads of 10.66 MB/sec, Writes of 10.62, and this is for large files. The average access time is 21.36 ms. The drives, because they are bridge technology and not native FireWire, are slowed down by their 4200 rotational speed, but it is minimal. We copied very large files to the VST drives with no problems and the speed was faster than any other backup alternative other than SCSI drives. In a word, these drives are superb performers.

Barefeats was kind enough to allow us to use one of their benchmarks of the VST FireWire drive. We did not do any benchmarks as we had few devices to test against. But from what I just said in the previous paragraph we believe these drives are fast, very fast. Barefeats has proven this true. Here is one of the benchmarks they posted:

The VST 1394 drive out-perform the LaCie and "Roll Your Own" drives on most of the tests. This is another factor which makes them so attractive. We encourage you to go to Barefeats and read the entire benchamark test. You can find it here. (Thanks to Barefeats too for allowing us to use the graphic.)

The Software

The Drives we received came with VST Format 2.2. If you are using the VST drives already then you should upgrade right away. This little program makes drives which are easy and fun to use even more so if you can imagine that. Here is a little of what you can do with VST Format 2.2

• Update the firmware
• Mount/Unmount
• Initialize
• Enable Contextual Menu plug-ins for the drive
• Password protect the drive (and Write protect the drive)

This is only some of it! One thing VST Format 2.2. provides is "Hot Plug Events." When you choose this from the "Options" menu you get a window with a place you can drop files or folders. "So what?" you ask? Well, you set Hot Plug Events up so that when the drive is mounted it automatically opens a file or folder. Drop SoundJam MP and some MP3s on it and every time you open the drive the music starts. (VST is currently offering SoundJam with VST Format, BTW.) Or, drop a Synchronize! Pro file on it and every time you mount the drive it will open and sync for you. It just doesn't get much easier.

If you have a drive then you need VST Format 2.2. You can get it here.

The only problem we had with the drive had nothing to do with the drive itself in fact. The Powerbook (200/FireWire) wouldn't recognize it sometimes. We'd plug it in and nothing would show up. The light wouldn't even go on in the drive. We had to do a Power Manager reset to get it going; sometimes it took only a shut down (not a restart). so if you have these problems this is what you need to do to take care of them before you start rebuilding desktop databases and such. The point is that Apple's implementation of FireWire is a bit buggy on the Pismo and this was the cause of the problem. If you use a VST drive on a Powerbook make sure that your firmware is up to date and you have all FireWire drivers up to date as well.

All in all . . .

I cannot say enough about these drives. They are so handy and so reliable that I am tempted to give away my USB ZIP drive. Okay, so I will never do that. But I can say that the Zip drive is used much less now days with the VST drives in hand (literally). And if you are a Powerbook owner, VST offers you all kinds of add ons. But a VST FireWire Ultra-Thin drive is about the best add on you can add to a Powerbook. It's as portable as the Powerbook itself. For example, I will be upstairs with the G4, and go downstairs to the Powerbook. But I always, and yes I mean always, now take my trusty VST drive along, plug it in and keep working like nothing happened.

If you don't have one of these you are missing out on a very Mac-like experience with a hard drive. Coolness, form factor, speed, reliability - - these drives have it all. And when native FireWire ones come out we'll be the first in line to buy one. We give these drive 5 bites out of the Apple, our highest rating.

David Schultz