Back in the early days of the computer if you needed to carry data files with you from one machine to the other you used floppy discs. The floppy gave way to the CD and DVD as a method for moving files form one computer to another and taking data with you on the road. As those methods became a paid for computer users, a new type of storage device emerged — the flash drive.

Today flash drives can be used for all sorts of things form backing up data from your computer to carrying files with you from desk to desk or office to office. The flash drive is growing in capacity, but with the majority of flash drives using USB they aren’t growing in performance much.

Just so you know, this is a piece of Samsung marketing material. It also happens to be pretty damn amazing and may make you judge your own computer unfit. A bunch of Samsung geeks strung 24 256GB SSD drives together in a RAID with the hopes of making the fast SSD drives even faster.

The system reaches transfer speeds of 2GBps. Here’s what that means in simple terms. All of Microsoft Office opens in .5 seconds, 53 programs from the test rig’s Start menu open in 18 seconds and the entire system defrags in about 3 seconds. In comic book terms, this is like if the Flash did a line of coke, drank a case of jolt cola, snorted pure sugar and for some reason his butt is was on fire. Yeah, its that fast!

I’ve said it before. We need more robot flash drives. It’s hard to find a cool robot flash drive. Some are too shiny, others, like the Ultraman are cool, but not robot enough.

This flash drive is all classic robot. The USB Robot comes in a small 1GB capacity, in green, black, and blue. Just yank his head off and plug him into your computer. When you transfer files, his little eyes light up!

Always losing your flash drives? Like body modifications a little too much? It’s all a question of how important your data is. Forget what you saw in the Star Wars prequels. This is how Anakin started to go bad.

It starts with a simple USB finger and before you know it your entire hand is a mass of ports, some inputs, some outputs. Then the standard changes and you have to sacrifice the other hand. Where does it end? Probably with a scrollwheel on your nads. This is purely a “visualization” project, but you know it will happen.

The Corsair Flash Voyager Port will work with just about any USB drive. Pushing the button will launch a software backup, transferring pre-determined data over to the docked USB flash drive. What this does is make any decent sized USB flash drive into the perfect backup drive.

Corsair wants you tp use their 64GB drive obviously. Nice device that is actually useful and provides some flexibility and freedom. Just keep track of your flash drives if you are using several. No word on availability, but the Corsair Flash Voyager Port should be available in a few weeks for under $20.

What the #%$$@ was the manufacturer thinking? There is no scenario in which this USB hub is even remotely normal on your desk. I guess if you like to torture cows by sticking flash drives in them, you might take a shine to it, but mostly it’s just wrong.

I guess it could have been worse. The cow could be standing and have a bunch of flash drives as udders. Maybe you have to coax them in so it looks like you’re milking the beast. Damn. I think I just gave them another idea. Seriously old Bessie here looks like she’s begging for a bullet to put her out of her misery. Poor thing.

We’ve come across some strange USB flash drives in our day, but this may be the strangest. The Cat Tail flash drive. It’s for those who want their laptop to look like it just swallowed the cat.

With this drive you’re getting 2 full GB of fur. It’s probably not a good idea as your real cat will have a field day batting this thing while you are trying to work.

Following up on their CurrenKey ultraportable flash drives, Lacie has a new storage solution that will have you losing even more keys then you already do. This one takes the form factor of…keys.

These miniature microSD card readers offer 20MB/s read and 10MB/s write speeds. PassKey supports microSDHC cards, and both iamaKey and itsaKey are avaialable with 4GB or 8GB of built-in storage. It won’t start your car or get you into your home, but it may still scratch a lottery ticket and they are shock-proof and Windows ReadyBoost-compatible.

Looks like our friends over at Tokyoflash got tired of making hard to decipher watches. And so the Tokyo Flash MP3 Tower was born. It features an integrated speaker on the base and a USB port to hook up USB flash drives with music files.

Red LEDs display the time straightforward for once, with volume and control buttons on top of the case. The device is powered by three AA batteries. And since the MP3 Tower is waterproof, so you take it with you in the shower. Just remember that you’ll need a waterproof USB flash drive too.

When you buy used stuff like computers, ipods etc, you can sometimes find surprises inside. Cool games, songs you like, porn… Chris Ogle bought an MP3 player for $14.50 at an Oklahoma second-hand store that had a much bigger surprise inside. 60 files that contained classified info like Iraq and Afghanistan deployed soldiers’ personal info, mission briefing and even a base equipment manifest.

Chris says the MP3 player never worked properly, so when he plugged it in to see why, he found the files. What he got was huge lists of soldier’s SSNs, cellphone numbers and health info. Chris is reportedly returning it to the DOD upon request. Hell, we all lose our flash drives from time to time.

Pearing Core Systems’ MEdiaCOre or MECO system is a digital command center/ convergence device that is basically a compact, hand-crafted cabinet for your living room. The unit runs off of a full-featured PC powered by Windows Media Center. It uses the Internet and your home’s audio, video and other automation to manage your digital life all from one place.

You can watch Internet movies and television, stream Internet radio, listen to MP3s and check out your digital photos and video. The device also helps to eliminate all of your media clutter, because MECO has two cable boxes, a wireless router, Blu-Ray and DVD-RW/CD-RW drives built right into the system, with room to integrate your own components, like iPods and game consoles.

The memory products folks over at Lexar kicked out two new USB flash drives last week which feature some different design touches. One is the JumpDrive TwistTurn and the other is the JumpDrive Retrax. Both will be available in March 2009.

The JumpDrive Retrax USB flash drive features a capless design with a retractable mechanism that designed to protect the drive and its contents. The TwistTurn USB flash drive, meanwhile, features a capless design of its own, with a rotating case cap that attaches to a keychain or backpack.

What’s one to do with all of those used up hard drives lying around? Turn them into swappable storage options, ala flash memory cards? That’s the idea anyhow with the new NewerTech Voyager Q hard drive docking station, being shown off at MacWorld and costing around $100.

Looking something like a stylish, small toaster for a hard drive, the Voyager Q is designed to turn any 2.5- or 3.5-inch SATA I/II drive up to 2TB into a bootable and hot-swappable external drive solution. It works with both Macs and PCs and lets its owner boot and swap drives at will, offering transfer speeds with a connected computer of up to 300MB/s.

For those looking to be stylish while always having some extra memory around their wrist, Brando has released its new USB thumb drive with decorative crystals.

The pros: No one is going to want to steal this tacky crapped up wrist-hugger with jeweled glass bits, so your data should be safe. Cheap crap should be in again this season. The cons: You’ve got a crappy piece of jewelry and already have plenty of flash drives lying around. For $33 you could do much better and probably get 3 rows of crap “Jewels” instead of 2. It’s available in silver or gold colors and the drive supports USB 2.0, Microsoft Windows XP/Vista, MAC OS and Linux OS.

A good way to sell drives is to repackage them with preloaded special edition movies or music content. That’s what Sony is doing with their Microvault USB flash drives. The company has unveiled a number of movie titles that will be available in their MicroVault USB drives, as well as some music.

Microvault drives range from 1GB to 16GB storage capacities. Preloaded content is available from a few popular choices such as Thriller: 25th Anniversary Edition, The Da Vinci Code and Men in Black. The special edition Thriller includes the complete re-release version of the original 1982 album, seven bonus tracks and four Billie jean videos.