Silicon Power Touch 510 USB Drive

Author:  Thushan Fernando Date:  2006.08.19 Topic:  Storage Provider:  Achieva Technologies Australia Manufacturer:  Silicon Power

The Touch510 drives come in a standard plastic casing with a card containing instructions on how to release the USB connector and the warranty card. As our units were for evaluation we were not sent any additional items you would usually find - such as software CD (for which you can download via their website), wrist strap and other goodies. We have however been promised that such items will be included in the retail packages.

The Touch510 range comes in 256Mb, 512Mb, 1Gb, 2Gb, 4Gb & an amazing 8Gb capacities with a claimed read speed of 27Mb and write speed of 10Mb (which we will test soon!). Other features taken from the official product page appears below:

We'll be taking a look at the 2Gb model in this review with the model number SP002GBUF2510V3W.

USB Connector Goodness

The JetFlash drive had (at the time) a unique mechanism of releasing the USB connector, instead of using a cap (which almost always falls off - speaking from experience!) it had a little slide on the side to push it out and pull it back in when not in use. Silicon Power used a different (and patented) approach with their Touch510 drives, instead of having a lever/slide mechanism they have a button that needs to be pressed (quite hard - as we will explain later) which will pop the USB connector out. Now we know what you're thinking, what if my dog accidentally tries to eat it like he did with your homework the other day and opens the connector, smothering it with his dribble. Well fear not! The button is quite hard to press (but not too hard, it forces you to put some effort) which ensures that any accidental presses won't cause the USB connector to open.

To retract the USB connector one has to squeeze gently on the sides of the thumb stick (up the top) and push the USB connector in, do it regularly and your fingers will start to hurt.

The unit also has an indicator around the height of the USB-connector-retracting-thumb-switch-button-thingy (yes we made that up!) that flashes a blue light within the Silicon Power logo when the unit is being used. We found it was much easier to recognize when the unit was busy working compared to the JetFlash's tiny blue LED.

The Touch510 drive is powered by a two high-performance Samsung SLC NAND Flash memory modules working in parallel to share the work load. Lets see if this pays off.

Bundled Software

The drive will come with a selection of software tools which enhances the drive’s usefulness (which at this stage is available via the website). Unlike the JetFlash utilities which ship as one application, the tools used by the Touch510 drive ships as separate utilities complete with PDF manuals for each. Filenames we tested appear after each name, note that version numbers may differ.

Security Function – LOCKv102.exe
This tool allows you to password-protect (16 Characters Max) your drive and partition public and private areas for those things you want to not share with people you lend your drive to (yes you know what we mean!).

PC Lock Function – PCLockv107.exe
The PC Lock function enables you to use the Touch510 drive as a key or dongle, after removing the USB drive the PC is locked, and the only way to bring it out of the locked state is to insert the same key again (keyboard and mouse are also blocked!).

Boot USB Drive – MakeBootable v1.0b11.exe (MFC)
Allows you to make the USB thumb drive bootable, but the great thing is (as long as you format it as FAT16) is that you don’t have to erase the files already on the unit nor do any complex tasks, just insert one file and viola!

SecretZIP – SecretZip v1.02.exe
This tool allows you to ZIP and UNZIP files within the drive – thus attempting to save storage space where possible (not using NTFS’s compressing options) as well as encrypting/decrypting files.

In terms of software, the Touch510 includes most components that the JetFlash unit already had with a few exceptions.