Hardware Review: EagleTec 8GB Nano Flash Drive

Aug 24

Reviews David 13 Comments
drive, eagletec, flash, miniature, mobilefun, nano, storage, tiny, usb

Approximate reading time is 3 minutes

We have a hardware review today. This is the smallest USB flash drive I have ever seen, and I wanted to try one out. So thanks to MobileFun.co.uk for sending one out to me for review.

EagleTec 8GB Nano

When it arrived in the post, I was very glad to see that it was in sensible packaging. It was still the usual toughened plastic that you have to utterly destroy to get into (not good for the second hand market), but for once the packaging was not oversized to the content.

Packaging

On the rear of the packaging a lanyard is included, if you wish to dangle the drive from a key chain, or whatever. I can see the use of dangling flash drives, but it’s something I’d never feel comfortable doing. The only other part is the plastic casing which covers the USB connector. Both the body of the drive and the case are seemingly black, but closer inspection reveals it is a very dense translucent blue plastic (we’ll see the purpose of this later).

Views of the drive with case removed.

As you can see here, the drive is almost all plug! It is just about identical to the receiver to the Logitech VX Nano mouse, and similar “Nano” Bluetooth adapters. What is quite stunning about this is that it has 8 Gigabytes of storage! There is a another model with only 4GB, and EagleTec also make a Micro SDHC reader in a similar form factor. The drive roughly measures 5mm x 19mm x 14mm, as shown here:

EagleTec8GBNano Dimensions

Size Comparison

When I first connected the drive to my laptop, I was surprised at how much of a tight fit it was. Given it’s small size this makes it tricky to remove, but it’s perfectly doable without causing damage to either device. When you connect it, there’s a red light inside which comes on constant to show it’s alive (I told you we’d see why it’s made of translucent plastic), and it flashes when it’s working.

The red LED on the Nano drive.

It’s hard to not stop and stare when the Nano drive is plugged in, because there’s hardly anything to see! This form factor is ideal if you want ultra compact data storage to carry around with you, and I imagine it would be particularly well suited for netbooks ,where ordinary thumb drives will disproportionately stick out of the side of the device.

This drive is not without its compromises though; you pay for the miniaturisation in two ways. At £28 (UKP), it is by no means a cheap drive for its capacity. Its performance is also compromised, as shown below. I’d say this drive could struggle to keep up with a similarly miniature micro SDHC card, depending on the class and quality.

EagleTec 8GB Nano Performance

I ran this test on my Ubuntu laptop, using the rsync command line program on batches of files of varying sizes, as indicated in the chart’s legend. I was so surprised by the small file write performance, that I re-ran the test, but got almost the same result. So it would seem this drive suffers from having to stop-start a lot.

So, while it is no speed demon, it is the smallest drive you’ll find out there, which is exactly what caught my interest. I’m looking forward to see if they can make a 16GB drive in this form factor.

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13 Comments (+add yours?)

jonamse
Sep 21, 2009 @ 07:30:16

I know that you use Ubuntu, but is this thing compatible with windows readyboost?

Reply
- David
  Sep 21, 2009 @ 11:09:51
  
  Hi there,
  Good question, right at this moment I don’t know!
  So, I have passed the question on and I’ll post again when I get an answer.
  
  Keep checking, or subscribe to comments by e-mail and you’ll get the answer in your inbox!
  
  Reply
- David
  Sep 23, 2009 @ 11:43:52
  
  For the record and anyone else reading, we talked about this more on E-mail and it seems they are suitable for Readyboost.
  
  Reply
James
Oct 20, 2009 @ 23:36:24

i bought one of these a few months ago. they arent exactly the most robust flash drives ever made, mine broke into 3 pieces last week as i took it out of the computer. i was actually surprised to see that the drive is just an 8GB SDHC micro card sitting next to a chip that has usb pins on one side and SD micro pins on the other. This is really a simple product, the sd micro card and the chip arent even soldered together! i was able to glue the parts back together and its good as new. Now when sd micro cards with larger capacities debut in a few years, i can just take the old 8gb out and slide in a new one! I’d recomend getting one of these just to break it for fun, you can still use it when its broken…

Reply
- David
  Oct 21, 2009 @ 08:07:50
  
  Hi there,
  Thanks for posting about this, that’s interesting.
  
  Mine hasn’t fallen apart yet. If you ever happen to get another one it would be interesting to see a series of photos of the internals you described.
  
  Reply
Mohammed Saeed
Oct 23, 2009 @ 23:10:26

Hello
what the way to carry it ?
put it in wallet ?
or u have a series to handle with keys ?
Regards

Reply
- David
  Oct 24, 2009 @ 00:24:44
  
  Hi there,
  Currently, I leave mine at home. Although if I were carrying it, I’d carry it in a pocket that has a zip
  
  Reply
Wojtek
Dec 16, 2009 @ 22:03:11

Hi,
Stupid question here but I really hope someone will help me. I managed to override it with Chromium Live Boot and after while trying to restore it I apparently screwed partition information so bad I cannot use with Windows anymore. Can you run Linux fdisk on your 8GB EagleTec NANO and read #of cylinders/heads/sectors and file system type. I will be really grateful if someone can report that… Thanks in advance. Wojtek

Reply
- David
  Dec 16, 2009 @ 23:01:45
  
  Hi there Wojtek,
  Good news for you, I’m a regular Ubuntu user, so I’ve just dug out the EagleTec drive from this review to test for you.
  
  You can use both fdisk and the GParted visual partition editor to view and edit partitions on your EagleTec drive (it’s just a normal USB drive, which is compatible with these programs).
  
  Let me know how you get on
  
  Reply
Patrick
May 27, 2010 @ 20:45:17

Bought one of these a month ago via eBay. Today it decided to just stop working. Lights don’t come on a it doesn’t show up on my Mac.

Reply
- David
  May 27, 2010 @ 22:48:27
  
  Hi Patrick,
  Sorry to hear about that. This can happen with flash drives, my 64gb Corsair Voyager recently died on me
  
  Shame it was from Ebay or you might have some recourse. Thanks for the feedback though!
  
  Reply
Eric
Jun 10, 2010 @ 04:42:52

I am looking to buy one of these for a radio on my boat. I need a usb drive that can fit behind a hinged protective cover. Anyway I just wanted to thank you and tell you I found your review very helpful.

Eric
USA

Reply
- David
  Jun 10, 2010 @ 11:46:46
  
  Hey Eric,
  Thanks for the post and I’m glad to have been of help
  
  Reply