USB Flash Drive with Capacity Meter
A lot of computer users think that usb flash drives are all the same. They look boring and can only be used to plug them into an USB port to read or write data.
The Lexar usb flash drive Jumpdrive Mercury adds one useful function to the usb drive.
The capacity of the usb drive is shown on the case of the usb drive making it very easy to monitor the available storage capacity of the drive without having to connect it to a PC to find out about that.
I only got an usb drive that does not show it's available capacity making it hard to judge if the free space on the device is sufficient to for copy or move operations.
Tip: Check out the Lexar USB Format application.
While you certainly could plug it in to see if space is sufficient, it may not be totally practicable if you have lots of USB Flash drives flying around on your desk. Plugging them all in to find out how much space is occupied and left takes time, and that is usually better spend on other work related activities.
The capacity is shown on a ten bar capacity meter which equals the storage capacity percentage of the drive. The available storage is displayed even if the usb drive is not connected to a computer. The USB drives come with a capacity of either one or two gigabytes and look very stylish.
Please note that you still need to do some basic math to get an estimate of the available free storage space on the device. Since you only get a percentage value, you need to use it and the drive's total capacity to calculate the free and occupied space on the drive.
Update: It appears that Lexar, the company that produced the USB Flash Drive with storage indicator, does not produce the USB device anymore. If you visit the official company homepage you will notice that no drive with capacity meter is shown on the USB product lineup page.
Update 2: The Lexar Echo MX Backup Drive is an USB storage device with capacity meter. It is more expensive than regular USB Flash drives but the capacity meter alone may be worth the extra price.
Update 3: Lexar was acquired by Longsys. You can still buy Lexar USB devices on third-party sites like Amazon. The official Lexar website is no longer available however.
The vast majority of USB Flash drives come without capacity meter. Still, some Lexar devices, like the Lexar JumpDrive M10 64GB Secure USB 3.0 flash drive LJDM10-64GBSBNA still display available storage on the device directly.
I’ve got just one of these, apparently they didn’t catch on. I searched to find out the story, and found your article, and little else. I guess that these days (writing in 2020) knowing how much of your capacity is used *when it’s not plugged in* is not enough of an issue. I’m going to hold on to mine, as a curious talking-piece of computing history. It’s got quite an “Oh, that’s cute!” factor, but it isn’t actually useful.
I have one of these in a Secure II 16GB flavor. I’m trying to screw with the meter with partitions of different formats, ETC… It can’t possibly be flawless.
It does have it’s ups and downs. It’s not instant. If you copy a folder and it takes a long time, it won’t update until the folder finishes copying.
I still think it is an interesting concept, thanks for the life update ;)
This is not an advertisement..
If you’re going to do advertisements, please at least say so at the start of the post. This doesn’t even sound like your writing. GHacks loosing credibility is not something you want.
Wow sorry to say but this is incredibly old… I’ve had that exact one for about a year…