The next test is a real application. We just wanted to check out the speed of these two drives in real-life tasks like copying files to the drive or reading them by means of the operation system. So, we copied a folder storing 1913 files (total weight – 241MB) from the HDD to the flash drive. Then we re-booted the system and copied the folder back to the HDD. The time intervals necessary to perform these operations were taken down as write and read speeds. Once again, we tested both flash drives with USB 2.0 and 1.1 ports. The speed of a HDD is much higher than the speed of a flash drive (even working via USB 2.0), so we don’t take into account the effect of the HDD speed and think the following numbers exactly reflect USB flash drives performance.

These diagrams show read and write time required to perform the copying, so smaller values stand for better results.

A-Data’s drive performs much better when connected to USB 2.0 ports (what else could you expect from a USB 2.0 flash drive?). When the devices are connected to USB 1.1 ports, Digitex Pen Drive is faster at writing, while read speeds of both are nearly the same in this case.

Then, we performed the same test of copying to and from the USB drive, but instead of a number of small files we took one file weighing 244MB.

Once again we observe the same picture: when connected to a USB 2.0 port, A-Data Speed Drive is nearly four times faster than the competitor. But when they are both plugged into USB 1.1 connectors, we can’t say exactly which one is better: Digitex Pen Drive is faster at reading, while A-Data Speed Drive – at writing. It’s rather strange if we look at the previous test: there Speed Drive showed slower writing (when connected to a USB 1.1 port).