Kingston, OCZ and Super Talent USB Flash Drives
Performance Testing & Conclusions
To test out the performance of the USB Flash drives we used the Dell M1710 notebook as the test bed and ran the performance test that comes with SiSoftware Sandra XI SP2.
In the 256kB/sec file test the Super Talent HD 1GB drive came in the lead with 176x read and 40x write speeds. The OCZ Rally2 came in second with 108x read and 35x write, while the Kingston DT Mini pulled up the rear with 76x read and 11x write speeds. It’s clear that the Super Talent DH 1GB Flash drive was the fastest when moving a 256kB file, but what about a 64MB file.
The Super Talent DH Flash drive lived up to its specifications and delivered 203x read performance while turning in 87x write speeds. The OCZ Technology Rally2 had 138x read speeds and exactly the same write speed as the Super Talent DH, which was interesting to see. The Kingston DT Mini peaked at 80x read and 21x write, which isn’t impressive compared to these other two drives, but is good for being such a small device.
Final Thoughts and Conclusions
When it comes to picking a winner in the USB Flash drive market its tough as consumers usually buy on price point alone and not performance levels. When it comes to pricing all of these drives are under $30 on the 2GB models for example.
2GB USB Key Pricing:
After using all of these USB Flash drives for several weeks it’s clear that the most used is the Kingston DT Mini, but for some reason when I try to use the DT Mini it is always missing. It seems my girlfriend keeps trying to “borrow” the drive as it’s “cute” and she wants one. The Super Talent DH and OCZ Rally2 are both fast drives that only differ in read speeds on our Dell M1710 gaming notebook. The OCZ Rally2 series of USB Flash drives can easily be found in the retail channel, but the Super Talent DH series is missing in action. Super Talent has been sending out their 200x DH Flash drives for over a month now and still not one retailer has them listed on their site. The model we reviewed today (DH-B1GBK) was by far the fastest USB Flash drive we have ever used, but good luck finding one! If the retail price was right on these drives it would be up for the Editor’s Choice award, but with no one carrying it and no pricing available the award can’t be given.
If you already own a USB Flash drive and are tired of waiting for your data to be moved from one device to another we suggest that you download SiSoftware Sandra Lite and compare your transfer speeds to what we have shown above. By running the ‘Removable Storage’ benchmark on this free utility you can see if your USB Flash drive is slowing you down. It’s amazing how far flash drives have come over the past 2-3 years!
Legit Bottom Line: The Super Talent DH series USB Flash drives operate at confirmed 200X speeds for unreal performance, but for those that like looks over speed the Kingston DT Mini is just too damn cute to ignore!
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