Petito

Click to enlarge

The ATP (company obviously named after the molecule involved in energy transfers in the body) Petito is packaged in an easily opened clip-shut clam-shell.

The product is obviously aimed at the Y chromosome deficient population with its elegant font used for the product name, the pink colour scheme and happy looking females. The rear of the package also proclaims the Petito as ‘Ultra chic USB Flash Drive for fashionistas!’ which further cements this point. While the drive itself is pink, you can also get this drive in a myriad of other colours including gold and silver.

Provided in the package is the USB drive itself and a short strap allowing you to wear it round your wrist. The loop for this clip is not located on the cap, meaning that if the cap comes off, you won’t lose the flash disc itself which is good news. You could wear this drive easily on a necklace too, although you might get some strange looks around the office…

Click to enlarge

The Petito is surprisingly small, especially in comparison to other USB drives, such as the OCZ ATV Turbo although the Petito is half the capacity. It’s small enough to not get in the way, but just large enough for you to use it easily (plugging into a USB port etc.).

The Petito, while small, manages to pack 2GB of storage space into the aluminium casing. Inside this casing is the SIP (System In Package) technology which is also features on the ATP ToughDrive Mini. SIP simply means that all of the vital components of the drive are completely encapsulated meaning that it’s completely waterproof, shock proof and dust proof which probably accounts for the 10 year data retention statistic. This means that it should survive a washing machine cycle if you forget to remove it from your pocket.

The USB drive is completely Windows ReadyBoost compatible, which is good for those who want to use it, although there are limited performance gains from doing this.

Click to enlarge

Reading the specifications, the most interesting part is the transfer speed. Advertised as 30mb/s max and fully backwards compatible with USB 1.1, this appears to be a tiny drive with a speed normally found on larger, more expensive drives. Hopefully our testing will prove that this drive is indeed as fast as ATP claim.

The most obvious ‘feature’ that is lacking is an activity LED. Every USB drive up to this point I’ve tested has seen one of these blinking lights telling you of the disc activity with varying degrees of usefulness. In all honesty, when did you last use the activity light, and not just watch the transfer dialogue on-screen?

The Petito also comes with security software to enable you to partition off a percent of the free space leaving the remaining as public access. The partitioned area is then ‘guarded’ by a simple password and overall the application looks pretty poor, but it might help someone sleep better at night knowing their documents are secure.