By Andrew Liszewski

These nifty, though somewhat macabre, chainsaw 2GB USB flash drives have started popping up all over eBay. They were originally included with special limited edition copies of Resident Evil 5 for the Xbox 360 and PS3, but have since been put on the auction block as sellers like hk-wan have decided to make a quick buck (or $23.99 in this case) instead.

[ eBay - PS3 Resident Evil 5 Chainsaw 2GB USB flash drive ] VIA [ Everything USB ]

By Evan Ackerman

A week or so ago, we wrote about some little miniature camera toys that you could get as prizes in Japan. They were cute, but they didn’t do anything. This tiny model of a Canon 5D DSLR actually does do something, with a 4 gig USB flash drive hidden inside the lens, which is a decent enough 24-105mm f/4 IS. ‘Course, if you want to store your files in high quality, you’d have to find yourself a Nikon D3X flash drive, instead.

These Canon 5D flash drives pop up on eBay for a totally ridiculous $100 and up, but if you can afford a 5D, you probably won’t care.

[ eBay ] VIA [ Ubergizmo ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Corsair unveiled their new Flash Voyager Port at CeBIT this year, and it’s basically a USB dock with a single button that can be used to launch a piece of automated backup software on your PC. While the Voyager Port is obviously color coordinated and styled to match the company’s Flash Voyager USB drives, the dock can apparently be used with any drive of your choosing, which is perfect given the propensity of flash drives to wander off and disappear on their own.

Now I’ll leave it up to you to decide if the ease-of-use of a single button is worth having another dock or cradle cluttering up your desk, but it should be hitting the market in a few weeks for around $20 for those of you who are interested.

[ Les Numeriques - CeBIT : Corsair Flash Voyager Port et autres détails sur les SSD ] VIA [ Everything USB ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Here’s the perfect accessory for those of you using a netbook, particularly with a small SSD hard drive. The diminutive MF-SU2 series of USB flash drives from Elecom are barely visible when connected to one of your laptop’s USB ports, but provide either 4 or 8GB of extra storage. They also come with a piece of security software known as PASS (Password Authentication Security System) that allows you to access the drive’s secure contents without having to type a password on your own PC.

I’m not sure when they’ll be available or for how much, but you’ll have your choice of black, blue, pink and white colors.

[ Elecom MF-SU2 Flash Drives ] VIA [ Digital Drops ]

By Evan Ackerman

Leyio’s new portable flash drive adds something a little bit extra to the mix, with a bunch of slightly unusual but potentially useful features. In addition to 16 gigs of storage, it has a fingerprint reader on top to keep all your naughty stuff secure. It’s also got a little screen, and a USB port to plug in other flash drives to transfer data.

The big draw, though, is the integrated ultra-wideband radio, which can transfer data between Leyio units in close proximity at about 10 mbps. It’s designed to be a sort of social file sharing thing, but with integrated PC syncing software, it would just be nice to be able to carry it around with you and have your files sync whenever you’re near your desk. It’s not that easy, of course, since you have to plug a little thing called a “shuttle” into your computer to make the UWB wireless connection possible, which means it’s not currently possible for Leyios to wirelessly communicate with anything besides other Leyios.

I guess what it comes down to is that the Leyio might be kind of neat if you and a bunch of your filesharing friends all had one, but otherwise, it might be a little too big and not enough of a convenience to pay for. There’s no price yet, but I bet it’s not going to be cheap.

[ Leyio (exceptionally useless flash website) ] VIA [ Tech Digest ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Why go to the trouble of encrypting the data on your USB flash drive when you can simply slap a lock on the business end, preventing other people from connecting it to their PCs in the first place? That’s exactly what this combination lock does, and while you still have to memorize a password/combination to access your files, it’s just 3 numbers long.

Wait, what’s that you say? Thanko has already been selling a similar USB lock for almost a half a year now? Well this version, from GREEN HOUSE, improves on their model by coming in your choice of black, white or silver finishes. So it looks like Thanko has just been taught an important lesson when it comes to innovation. You just can’t sit back and rest on the laurels of a product that only comes in one color. And thank you GREEN HOUSE for providing a much improved solution.

[ Akihabara News - Combination Lock USB Thumb Key Solution ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Flash drives are finally reaching storage capacities where they’re actually useful as a backup tool, instead of just for transporting files. So at CES 2009, Sandisk introduced what they claim to be the first USB flash drive to include a dedicated ‘Backup’ button. What innovation! At the push of a button your specified files are automatically copied to the flash drive, and for extra peace of mind the drive’s got password protection and AES hardware encryption to keep your files safe and secure. The drives should be available sometime in April of this year in capacities ranging from 8GB to 64GB, and will sell for between $39.99 and $199.99.

[ SanDisk Ultra Backup USB Flash Drive ] VIA [ Uncrate ]

By Andrew Liszewski

It might seem odd for a company like Victorinox to exhibit at CES, I mean you’d expect to see them at the local Gun n’ Knife show instead, but their line of SwissFlash knives have evolved from simply a flash drive embedded into a pocket knife, to a full-blown office-friendly tool. And their latest model, the Presentation Pro, comes with a flash drive up to 32GB in size that’s now protected by a biometric fingerprint sensor for keeping your confidential documents private.

But it’s also designed to serve as a handy presentation remote, since it comes with bluetooth and a set of emulated left and right mouse buttons. So the knife you probably already carry in your pocket for opening plastic blister packs can now control your exciting PowerPoint slideshows as well. And for pointing out specific items, they’ve even crammed a laser pointer in there too. At the moment the SwissFlash Presentation Pro doesn’t appear to be listed on the Victorinox website, probably because it isn’t for sale just yet, but prices range from $164.95 for the 8GB model up to $329.95 for the 32GB.

[ Victorinox ]

By David Ponce

It’s a flash drive with a numeric keypad that contains software for writing a diary. I’d like to think it’ll attract a certain demographic and I’m also under the impression that this demographic is the tween girl. But here’s the thing: I don’t get these girls. I also don’t believe any tween gals read us, but maybe one of you knows one? So help me out. Do you think they’d like the following?

It’s a 1GB flash drive. It’s protected by a secret code that you have to enter on the numeric keypad before you actually plug the drive in. Once plugged, software is launched that lets the user not only write a diary, but do a bunch of things like: read fortune cookies, interpret dreams, help you get inspired to write, etc. The encryption is military grade and the internal chip covered in epoxy, making a physical break-in impossible. It’s $60 and available from a few retailers.

So… If this something tween girls will like, or just toss in a drawer after mom buys it for them excitedly next Christmas?

[ Secret Diary ]

[ Purchase from Amazon (not an affiliate link) ]