Sony Micro Tiny Vault
September 19, 2008 - By Ian Barnes
The Sony Micro Tiny Vault (1Gig) is a glimpse of where portable storage devices may be headed in the future. Being only slightly bigger than the SIM Card that’s in your mobile phone you would think that the storage size would be almost the same as that of your SIM Card, but you’d be wrong . They come in storage sizes ranging from 256Mb to 8Gig. And that isn’t even the best part, the best part is the fact that using the software provided with it, you can almost double the amount of storage space on the device.
Getting started
When you plug the Sony Micro Tiny Vault into your USB port, Windows goes about configuring it for use and once that is done you are able to install the Micro Vault Expander software which handles the compression and decompression of files while you are copying to/from the storage device.
Some test results
Obviously we couldn’t just go on what the press releases said, so we ran a few tests comparing the compression rates that the software achieves and here is what we found:
Text File (Alice in Wonderland):
Before: 148KB
After: 64KB
Generic Text File (Random article):
Before: 416KB
After: 172KB
PDF File (Containing images and text):
Before: 2.2Mb
After: 2.08Mb
DOC File (Containing images and text):
Before: 124KB
After: 64KB
Unfortunately already compressed files and images don’t benefit from the on-the-fly compression and use up the same space on the device as on your PC.
Conclusion
The Sony Micro Vault Tiny is a great idea and we are very excited to see where else this technology will be used in the near future - enabling us to store greater amounts of data on smaller devices. Overall, it gets 4 out of 5 from me, the only downside being no Mac/Linux support for the compression/decompression software.
Specifications
- Interface: Hi-Speed USB (USB2.0
- Port type: Type A USB port / USB1.1 port
- External Dimensions: 14.5 x 2.7 x 32mm
- Weight: Approximately 1.5g
Pricing and Availability
The Sony Micro Vault Tiny can be located using PriceCheck and retails for around R140.
Rate this review:
(4 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
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Cooolll, i carry too many of these flash devils around… time to get a decent size small one… thismight be it
Why is it so expensive?
At R135 it’s about $19
I bought the same thing in the US for $11 , about 70% cheaper.
Rip-off!!!!!!!!!!
I just bought a Sony Microvault in China. It cost about R 350 and has a storage capacity of 240 GB !!
Forget about all other hard drives - this is bigger than my PC’s. It can also autorun programs.
I thougt R 350 was quite good for this capacity. A 8GB USB flash costs about the same in SA.
I have a 240Gb Sony Mini Vault which i bought from China. I can’t seem to get it working, i can’t format it or extract files from it. Any ideas anyone????
Is there are software i need to make it work with my PC????
How can format it????
desperate here
I’m sorry to dissapoint you, but my 240gigs is working perfectly well, I’m still completely amazed by it, seems unvelivable that this type of memory has advanced so much, now my 16g iphone seems ridiculous…
I also bought in china, and negotiated a good price, under 20usd.
hi there
i get the same USB 240G at about 20$ from CHINA last year but i was not happy because 1st its not so fast 2 not easy to copie or format it and even to delet some files is not so easy too,,,,,!!!1
1st the 240G is to big to be used by the pc so
i try to fromat it but no way so i format it by the Xp system to NTFS
mean i do the big job and now the system or any OS can not know the USB mean
the hardware ID and USB hardwarewas pilot was not protected ….and i think its a USB of 2G and there is a software init to show you as if you make a copy of more then this its a nice job…if not way sony have not the format usb freeware !!
Hi,
I’m Amran S Al-Areqi, I have SONY usb2.0 240GB now I need to format it but there is a problem
I can’t formatting the SONY usb2.0 240GB>
When I try the commend format at windows xp the message where the file system is NTFS the drive type can’t formatting by these program and when formatting by file system FAT32 the message is the size is too match to formatting by that type.
look the file system before I try to formatting the flash disk are FAT32.
So, please help me to solve these problem.