Sunday, May 18, 2008

Fastest flash drives.

A couple of weeks ago I was answering the above question on eggXpert forum. (which you can read here) I answered that because a person who had very high ranking on the forum was saying that all the flash drives work at the same speed. IF YOU EVER HAD a flash drive, you know what a bullshit that is...!!! then here was another guy telling his flash drive which is A-Data PD7 has the fastest data rate and asking the readers to google it up, which brings up his blog!!!!!! any way, 24MBps is not bad. But I decided to put up some information and benchmark results I found, so that any one looking for a fast flash drive can have some idea. (these data is found here)

So lets just see what I found
Note : if you have any more data, please submit as a comment. It will really help anyone reading this. Specially if you have a benchmarking result

Higher numbers means better performance.

The chart shows the differences between the speeds very clearly. The tiny sandisk lagging far behind can be explained because it is made to be small, rather than to be fast. And the corsair survivor has a huge 32GB capasity, but does not offer as much speed. And the corsair 2GB voyager falls in the middle whereas it's 4GB version leads the competition. My flash drive, Patriot XT, has the best burst transfer rate, but as a brand, Corsair, Lexar, Kingston and Sandisk can be said better.

And if you take a look at the seek times,

lower times are better
Well, the differences are suppressed by the Sandisk cruzer mini, which has a ridiculous access time.

And the CPU usage heavily depend on the CPU and memory

The patriot leads because I have a quad core processor.

So here is my HDTunes screen capture,
Patriot Xporter XT 4GB

You can view the spread sheet here,
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=ptpmWkem-m1sMciJEWQkYaA
you also can submit your data.




17 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi ~ this is great, very helpful! It would be even more helpful if you'd label the charts with the drive sizes. Thanks very much for the info.

xcorat said...

Sure, I will probably update the charts. And definitely will keep that in mind, Thank you..!!

sandos said...

You are missing the most important characteristic of flash: the long random access write times. This is crucial for many applications, and is imho much more interesting than sequential read speed. Finding flash that randomly writes quickly is not very easy. I have a 256MB flash here with very nice times, I think its around 6ms but alas, 256MB is soo small it is of no use: I might as well use a RAM-disk!

Anonymous said...

I think you may have used the wrong version of A-Data flash drive. They make several types but the PD7 is the fast one. I bought several different brands of flash drives looking for the fastest one and the A-Data PD7 was the clear winner for my usage (large files averaging about 40meg).

I've owned the Voyager, Voyager GT, and XPorterGT. The PD7 was nearly twice as fast.

Dan Pham said...

Thanks for the info, but please post the write speed, as well. Also, you forget to differentiate the Voyager and the Voyager GT. The GT series are very hard to find, even online.

tiga2001 said...

I second the opinion on the A-Data MyFlash. MyFlash is a series of usb flash drives, not a single model. I would like to see you use A-Data PD7 for this test. I don't know if this is useful, but at overclockersclub they have a review of the PD7. Here is the link:
http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/adata_pd7_8gb_flash_drive/

Anonymous said...

Many thanks for the comparison. I am a frustrated shopper for a FAST flash drive and this will help a lot. If you rework these charts someday, may I suggest removing the outlier from the seek test so the other differences are easier to discern.

Unknown said...

Hey, thanks a lot for the chart. It was very helpful on deciding wich drive to buy. I thought that any drive from a recognized brand like kingston or corsair would be the same... But appearantly, that's not the case.

Anonymous said...

It seems to be very common for people to compare the read rate of these drives, but I find that the write speed is a much larger factor in my use.
I have not yet found a thumbdrive with a higher write speed than the Lexar Jumpdrive lightning.
My tests:
Lexar JD Lightning: Read 22MBs Write 18.5MBs
Xporter XT: Read 27MBs Write 10MBs
Adata xupreme XPG: Read 26MBs Write 4MBs
supertalent pico: Read 26MBs Write 4.4 MBs
These numbers are all for 5MB file size. As files get smaller, everything gets worse.

Surprisingly something that is just as fast and faster than most thumbdrives is the kingston mobility pack with the micro sd reader.

Branded USB Sticks said...

One of the impressive information you have shared with us. It is true that it is hard to find the quality information, but you have done a great job buddy.

Martijn said...

I would also love to see timings for random writes, which has always been the one thing that flash memory is bad at.

Other than that, it's a nice little roundup. Too bad it's not very profesionally done, so it only provides an indication, and no hard facts.

مفضل said...

this is good.. wanna post up a few listings of some of the newer flash drives? thnx

big bang theory season 5 dvd said...

Adoble Flash is very good. I use this player.

how to convert f4v to flv said...

The blueprint shows the differences amid the speeds actual clearly. The tiny sandisk backward far abaft can be explained because it is fabricated to be small, rather than to be fast. And the bandit survivor has a huge 32GB capasity, but does not action as abundant speed. And the bandit 2GB charlatan avalanche in the average admitting it's 4GB adaptation leads the competition.

Duplicator said...

What a speed! Does it have any successors?

Printing Brochures said...

You have certainly informed us about the fastest flash drive. It is great to get the information

Unknown said...


Great post Dear………keep posting!!!
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