If you're still looking for a USB flash drive with a physical write-protect switch, I very much recommend the PQI U339H or U339 Pro series, as they are slim enough to have two side-by-side in most USB port configurations and are well-built. Whether they have the fastest I/O or not, I doubt it, but of the various brands I've owned (OCZ, Kingston, Ritek, PNY, SanDisk), mine has been among the better-performing ones. Curiously, even the OCZ ATV which was rated for support of ReadyBoost and which I expected the best performance from, was reported by Vista as inadequate for ReadyBoost. That's not a major issue for my needs but reasonable speed is.
The PQI flash drive in 16GB capacity runs about $35 from NewEgg, as shown here:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820141488
As for USB flash drives with a write-protect switch, I wish more vendors would make them. Where I work, one cannot use a USB flash drive on a PC used for processing of classified data, unless the USB drive has a physical write-protect function, not merely a software controlled option or encryption software. When searching for a higher-capacity USB drive with a write-protect switch I found the Ritek Twister in a 16GB capacity and bought it. PQI did not yet have the U339H in that sized at the time, and I liked that the Twister had a pivoting cap feature. But, in comparison to the PQI drive, the Twister performed horribly and I seldom use it for anything now. I've read that it may have issues with being formatted for NTFS, but I need that in order to support files > 4GB size. I'd like to see a PQI U339H in a 64GB capacity at a reasonable price...I'd probably buy it without question.
Regards,
Daryl
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