MacDirectory Magazine

REVIEW SNOW LEOPARD ON YOUR KEYCHAIN > TUFF-‘N’-TINY 16GB USB WORDS BY RIC GETTER One of the most impressive sights at this year’s Macworld Expo was also one of the smallest: a one-inch long USB drive that promised capacities up to 16GB. Verbatim’s TUFF-‘N’-TINYultra- compact drives were just too small to be believed. At the time, the fact that the largest one they had on display was just 4GB didn’t do a great deal to enhance their credibility. However, this spring, a small envelope arrived in our mailbox that proved that this baby is for real. The TUFF-‘N’-TINY is a single slab of a plastic composite that will disappear almost halfway into a USB socket. The gold contacts are embedded in its small body and though exposed, are essentially out of harm’s way. Verbatim has also designed the drive to resist static discharge and water. The later is actually quite believable because the drive is essentially a solid unit. The drive’s performance compares favorably to a full-size USB Flash drive, reading data at an average of 20 MB/s and writing at 8 MB/s. These aren’t exactly hard drive speeds, but it held its own against a full-size 16GB USB with a reputation for good performance. Like most USB Flash drives, the TNT comes formatted as MS-DOS FAT32 so it plays nicely with both PCs and Macs. But at 16GB, one starts thinking about grander and more glorious uses than simply lugging around vast quantities of data. A full install of Snow Leopard weighs in at just over 9GB. So if you want to consider building an extremely portable rescue device, the TUFF-‘N’-TINY is a perfect size for a reliable lifeboat. But will Snow Leopard run on a Flash drive? Why not? Building a Little Lifeboat Being confronted with dreaded Flashing Folder of Despair when you boot up is never a good experience. It’s even worse if you’re on the road with your laptop and far from an install or repair disk. The retail Snow Leopard install disk will happily create a boot drive on virtually any medium big enough to hold it and you’ll have plenty of room on the TNT 16GB for any or all of your favorite rescue utilities. The process will take about an hour, but like any Mac OS install, your presence isn’t required for most of it. We’re going to assume that you’re reasonably familiar with Disk Utility and have done at least one Snow Leopard install. First you’ll need to erase the drive. Insert the TNT into a USB port on your computer. The installation may work through the hub but the required reboot won’t. Launch Disk Utility and erase the USB drive, changing the format to Mac OS Extended (journaled). Then, move over to the Partition tab and set the Volume Scheme and options to create a single GUID partition. Now it’s time to insert your Snow Leopard DVD and start the install process. You can use the “Customize…” option to filter out all the international localizations and add Rosetta and QuickTime 7, if you like. It really doesn’t matter. A full install will easily fit on the drive. On the next screen, select the TNT and start the install. For us, the process took just under an hour, not much longer than a hard drive install. When it’s done, the system will reboot. It’s usuallysmart enough to know it needs to boot to the external drive, but we like to use the Option key startup to be sure it’s selected. Soon, you’ll be entertained by the “Welcome” music video. When Snow Leopard starts the usual interrogation for registration information, you can simply hit Command-Q (an undocumented escape route) to bypass the process and skip right to the account setup. Finally, install your favorite drive repair utilities and remove any of Apple’s built-in apps you don’t want. You’ll be happy to discover that your USB lifeboat boots in under a minute—much faster than bootable DVDs. Verbatim has been around a long time. It started out as the maker of some of the best floppies on the market and managed to survive and thrive through the decades of change in the storage market. Now, the TUFF-‘N’- TINY, along with the MediaShare network storage system and an elegant FireWire 800/USB portable (the SureFire), it’s proving once again to be an innovative company that is quickly becoming very Mac-friendly. Product TUFF-‘N’-TINY 16GB USB Drive Made by Verbatim Price $63.99 (suggested retail) Pros Remarkably small; Solidly built; Good performance Cons May be rather easy to loose System Requirements USB support Rating ★★★★★ 98 MacDirectory

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