We're big fans of USB 3.0 flash drives. The increase in speed the newer technology provides over standard USB 2.0 sticks makes copying large amounts of files complete in a flash. Any of us who are using computers older than a couple of years, however, probably won't have the required USB 3.0 ports to take advantage of these speeds, which is why competent and speedy USB 2.0 devices are still needed.

The most striking feature of the Dane-Elec Batman 4GB USB drive is its design. Fashioned in the style of Gotham's famous Dark Knight, if you're a fan of the comic book hero then you're going to love this drive. It looks great, and the glowing bat symbol is a nice touch.

Included on the drive are a set of high-resolution desktop images featuring - you've guessed it - Batman and his rogues' gallery.

As far as the drive goes, 4GB is a very decent size, with plenty of room for carrying documents, homework and photos. It's speedy as well - for a USB 2.0 drive of course.

Verdict

If you're a fan of Batman and looking for a USB drive then this is a fine choice. Similarly, if you know someone who's a fan and are looking for a present for them, then you won't go wrong with this.

It's quirky, good looking and a decent performer. If you're immune to Batman's charms, however then you'd be better off getting a more generic - and cheaper - USB flash drive.

You could be forgiven for mistaking the LaCie FastKey for a standard USB flash drive. However, the FastKey is a bit special, bridging the gap between traditional USB drives and external hard drives.

The small size makes it incredibly portable, although with 120GB of your precious data stored on it, you won't want to take it out and about too often. Handily, it can sit unobtrusively in a PC or connected to a router to create a NAS device.

The reason it's so small is because it's a solid state drive, and the lack of moving parts means it's also very fast. In our tests, it took just 16 seconds to transfer a 1GB file, with the average speed being 93Mb/s.

The FastKey comes in three sizes, 30GB, 60GB and 120GB, with performance increasing according to capacity. We tested the 120GB version, which performed very well, but it's disappointing that opting for less storage space means accepting a drop in speed.

Even so, the LaCie FastKey does a good job of backing up important files. Although it doesn't come with back-up software (which Seagate is keen on providing with its external hard drives – often to the annoyance of its customers due to the quality of said software), the FastKey includes powerful AES 256 encryption and a two-year subscription for 4GB of online storage.

The build quality is great too, with an outer shell made from aluminium, but there's no escaping that this is an incredibly expensive external hard drive – especially in its 120GB incarnation. There are plenty of alternatives that will do just as much for less.

A couple of months back we checked out one of Kingston's chunky USB 3.0 data sticks, the DataTraveler Ultimate 64GB. We found it lightning-quick and surprisingly affordable. In fact, it was so good it garnered one of our Gold Awards.

And then we come to the Kingston HyperX MAX 3.0 120GB. This DataTraveler stablemate operates under a different brand name, associating it more with Kingston's performance RAM than with its other USB sticks.

Combined with the relatively new interface and shiny outer-skin this has allowed Kingston to charge almost £200 for this 120GB hard drive. But then this flash memory-based drive has the performance to almost justify it.

Even in USB 2.0 mode it's performing at the very limits of that geriatric interface, but in its native USB 3.0 mode it's a performance monster.

Copying a 1GB file in just over 10 seconds makes it twice as fast again as the USB 3.0 DataTraveler. The average read speed of 174MB/s too is almost matching that 2x speed boost over the data stick. We were able to copy our entire 32GB gaming test suite in a little under five minutes, and that shows exactly where this device is going to plough a furrow for itself.

This isn't for the average punter, someone who's going to shunt about the odd file, but the professional video-editor or photographer. Someone who needs the capability of moving lots of large-scale files around, and on the move.

The only real downside for the HyperX MAX, then, is that USB 3.0 still doesn't have the ubiquity of the older interface. That said, this is going to be the fastest 120GB USB 2.0 drive out there too.

Blockmaster's little SafeStick USB flash drive may not be particularly sticky in the wood sense, but it sure is safe.

As a portable key to transport valuable and/or sensitive data around, for the serially forgetful – or just work for the British government – the SafeStick 4GB drive is a handy device indeed.

The idea is that rather than simple software encryption, the Blockmaster's key comes with full AES256 CBC hardware encryption. It's an always-on form of protection which means that as soon as the stick is removed from a system or device the hardware protection is there.

When the drive is plugged back in again, but not logged in, all you will see when clicking the drive is the login application and no hint of any other storage capacity.

I tried a few basic tools and the command prompt to see if I could at least see where the files were, but unless you enter the password it simply doesn't exist. It's easy enough security measure to set up, asking you to create a secure alpha/numeric password to begin with and then you're set up.

Make sure it's something you'll remember, especially if you are looking after important or sensitive data on the drive, as there's no password reset option. If you forget it then a factory reset is your only hope, and that will wipe all of your precious data.

The difficulty we have with this USB stick, though, is in the price. At £74 that makes it a rather astonishing £18.50 per gigabyte of storage space.

But then this isn't a capacity drive, it's a security drive and so long as your sensitive data isn't on the too chunky side the SafeStick USB drive should serve you well.

Early adopters are usually the ones who get punished. It's one of the laws of the tech jungle. Jump the train too early and you'll get shafted, both in terms of pricing and reliable performance. That's probably why it's taken so long to get USB 3.0 data sticks from the usual reputable folk.

To be honest that's not such a bad thing, as it's only recently that every new motherboard, from the top to the bottom, is coming out with USB 3.0 ports on them.

One of the surprising things is that this DataTraveler doesn't have the sort of price premium I would expect from a new tech stick, especially considering the performance increase USB 3.0 delivers.

At £138 it costs only a little more than the £100-odd that traditional USB 2.0 64GB sticks cost, and you're getting way more than twice the performance. The key performance metrics will always be the read/write numbers, and you could colour us very surprised to see the DataTraveler Ultimate outperforming even its stated numbers on the packaging.

Kingston is touting read/write figures of 80MB/s and 60MB/s respectively. Plugged into a Gigabyte board running off an NEC USB controller we found max numbers of 97MB/s and 73MB/s. Compare that with the USB 2.0 performance of 35MB/s and 29MB/s for the same stick's read/write speeds and the boost is obvious.

In our real-world file transfer test it was also twice as fast as USB 2.0 modes, taking 21 seconds in USB 3.0 against the old school interface's 44 seconds. So it's quick, and only a little more expensive than the older tech.

You may not be an early adopter here, but it'll be a more than satisfying purchase.

Awesome. The Kingston Data Traveller 300 has 256 whole gigabytes of storage in a tiny form factor.

I remember back in the early days of computing when a 256MB hard drive cost £400 and a goat.

But now you can pick up a 500GB portable hard drive for £50. The goat is happy.

At £500, it's really good value, IF YOU'RE BILL BLOODY GATES. If you don't happen to be the head of Microsoft, it's probably quite a lot of cash to be spending on a USB drive. You could buy 256 individual 1GB drives for about £100.

We can see the appeal, though, and if the price comes down a bit (actually, a LOT) it might be worth investing in. If you're one of those poncy media types who HAS to have high-definition media files or giant bitmaps with you at all times, it might be worth it.

But, then again, I've never met a poncy media type who doesn't own a manbag with more than enough space for a cheapo portable drive.

It's not like it's even a particularly good drive. Copying a 750MB file took far longer than it did to our Sandisk Cruzer drive, which means copying a 256GB file could potentially take days.

The chunky USB-hogging design is annoying too. But then, if you're investing £500 in a USB drive, you can probably afford a gold-plated USB hub hand crafted by virgins in Tahiti.

The Clickfree Traveler 900 is a credit card-sized Flash memory with integrated USB cable is available in 16, 32 and 64GB sizes.

Simply plug it in and it automatically launches an incremental backup. Clickfree Traveler is an easy way to back up Office documents, music, videos and more.

It covers over 400 file types, but you can restrict what it does and doesn't copy to save memory. It's ideal for safeguarding your work while away from your usual backup solution, but the price isn't as wallet-friendly as its form factor.

I've had the dubious pleasure of trying the first dedicated, portable eSATA drive, the OCZ Throttle Drive. Boasting fantastical transfer speeds with the same ease of use as USB, eSATA will surely become the flash drive standard of the next few years. But today?

You see it's not as simple as the good ol' USB drive. It seems neither case manufacturers, motherboard makers or flash drive creators have spoken much about how best to attach one to your PC. Alan's mobo-mounted eSATA port sat too close to his other full USB ports to be able to get it sat comfortably.

The front panel eSATA socket on my monolithic Lian Li chassis was also too skinny to allow the rather bulbous end of the Throttle to make enough contact to be recognised. There's also the fact that many current eSATA ports are unpowered - more and more eSATA/USB combo ports are coming, but until then you need to have the USB cable plugged in.

The plug and play capabilities of eSATA are likewise a little dubious too. On both Windows 7 and Vista, the OS wouldn't recognise the drive when it was plugged into the eSATA socket and would only respond if it was there from boot. No amount of scanning for hardware changes or drive management yielded positive results.

So, no so positive then? Well, not until we get down to raw speeds that is. The eSATA write speed was over four times faster than USB 2.0, copying a 1GB file in just ten seconds. Put that up against my, admittedly now ageing, 32GB OCZ Rally and it's almost a minute and a half faster.

At the moment, the whole eSATA drive thing is a little awkward, but it will mature. This drive is only a touch more expensive than other 32GB flash drives and offers far speedier transfer times if you make the effort.

This tiny 8GB USB drive takes portability to the extreme, measuring just 30 x 2 x 12mm.

A lanyard line lets you attach it to your keyring and we'd strongly advise you do this, as although the drive is designed to be ultra-rugged, it's very easy to lose.

Using the drive is a pleasure. You can either take advantage of its drag-anddrop capabilities, or use Verbatim's preinstalled Carry It Easy software. This lets you not only synchronise the device with your computer, but also compress and password-protect your data.

This USB drive is an excellent product, but some users might not be keen to trust their data to such a losable drive.

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We never settled on a generic name for USB memory sticks, but because many of us keep them on a keyring, and 'key drives' is one of the candidate names, we're charmed by the latest line from LaCie, the iamaKey 4GB.

There are three different models; this version is sleek and has a scratch-resistant connector. As for the other models, the itsaKey is a bit chunkier, and the PassKey has no memory of its own, but a slot for a microSD card.

The prices, capacities and speeds are great. LaCie has produced a unique design that has us reaching for our wallet.

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