The scoop: USB Transfer Express, by Hamilton Electronics, about $900.

What it is: This rectangular device looks like an old-school cable set-top box or video game console, with 15 USB slots arranged in three rows. With these 15 slots acting as "target" slots for USB flash drives, a 16th slot acts as the "source" slot. The device lets you copy, erase or transfer data from as many as 15 USB drives (you can go as high as 30 drives by daisy-chaining a second device) at once.

Click to see: USB Transfer Express, by Hamilton Electronics

Why it's cool: Groups and departments that have to place the same data on multiple USB drives (sales and marketing material, data sheets and so forth) usually have to do so on a tedious one-to-one basis. With the Transfer Express, they can put all their material on one drive, then copy it to 15 drives with the press of a button, saving time and effort.

The device goes beyond that, however, with some additional functions. The Target-to-Source button lets you collect data from multiple USB drives and copy them to one source drive. This would be great in the education market, for example, where a class of 30 students who complete their assignments on USB drives can hand in their work, and the teacher can put it all onto one drive to look at later. Because larger, USB-based hard drives can be used with this device (not just USB sticks), the target-to-source function can be used for backup.

The system is compatible with some USB-enabled MP3 and MP4 media players (sorry, not the iPod), so you also could copy media files directly onto those drives. In addition, if you have a USB-enabled card reader, you can copy to or from memory cards, such as SD, MMC and Compact Flash.

The device was very easy to use. Its glowing red and green LEDs made it easy to tell when copying or erasing was complete.

Some caveats: Reading the instructions is very important here: You don't want push the wrong button and inadvertently erase data. In addition, materials that are copied need to be placed into a specifically named Source or Target folder on the drive, so users still may have to insert the drives to move around data (changing the name of the folder, for example) after the copying has occurred. USB 2.0 support is required, so some older flash drives may not work correctly. Finally, at $900, the device may be too expensive for casual users.

Grade: 4 stars (out of five)

Shaw can be reached at kshaw@nww.com. Cool Tools videos and Twisted Pair audio podcasts are always available at www.networkworld.com.