X-bit labs

Roundup of USB Flash Drives with 4GB+ Storage Capacity (page 11)

Category: Memory

by Andrey Kuznetcov

[ 02/16/2007 | 02:10 PM ]

Testbed and Methods

We used the following test programs:

• FC-Test version 1.0
• FC-Test version 2.0
• IOMeter version 2003.02.15

The testbed was configured like follows:

• Albatron PX865PE Pro mainboard
• Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz CPU
• IBM DTLA-307015 15GB hard disk drive
• Radeon 7000 32MB graphics card
• 256MB DDR SDRAM
• Microsoft Windows XP SP2

We will use two versions of FC-Test that differ in some points of their test algorithms to be able to compare the results of the flash drives with those that we have tested earlier.

Performance in Intel IOMeter

Sequential Read & Write

We’ll start out with the synthetic IOMeter benchmark. This pattern measures the drive’s sequential read and write speed on data blocks of different size (from 0.5 to 1024KB).

We’ll use shortened names for the drives here and elsewhere for better readability.

The first diagram shows the sequential read speed of the drives and the 4GB flash drives from Buffalo and Corsair are in the lead here. They are closely followed by the drives from ATP, Patriot and Super Talent. The 8GB drives from A-DATA and Corsair stopped just a little short of the 30MB/s line. The RiDATA, SanDisk and TwinMOS drives are obviously slower than the others.

Here’s what we have at sequential writing. The Kingston Elite turns to be a hopeless loser in this test as its speed is never higher than 1MB/s even. The group of fastest drives is comprised of the same models that have been superior in the sequential reading test, particularly by the drives from Buffalo, Super Talent, ATP, A-DATA, Patriot, and Corsair.