31 USB 3.0 Thumb Drives, Tested And Reviewed

[Trooly Emet]

Have you

 

[Trooly Emet]

Well I have bad experience with 32GB Voyager GT. I bought it for his speed - my work depends on fast and reliable stick. In a year and half I send it back for three times - one time repaired and two times replaced with a new stick! Not to mention loss of data ... sorry but for testing or playing with it can bo good, but certinly not reliable for heavy duty use. My opinion anyway ...

 

[Trooly Emet]

Well I have bad experience with 32GB Voyager GT. I bought it for his speed - my work depends on fast and reliable stick. In a year and half I send it back for three times - one time repaired and two times replaced with a new stick! Not to mention loss of data ... sorry but for testing or playing with it can bo good, but certinly not reliable for heavy duty use. My opinion anyway ...

 

[ssi]

One essential piece of information is missing. Are these drives all reported as Fixed disks (Local Disk) or Removable under Windows. This is important because Windows8ToGo does not work properly on Removable drives. Also Easy2Boot multiboot Flash drives work better if the drive is a Removable drive because I can run all my Windows Install ISOs from a Removable USB flash drive using Easy2Boot.

 

[ssi]

One essential piece of information is missing. Are these drives all reported as Fixed disks (Local Disk) or Removable under Windows. This is important because Windows8ToGo does not work properly on Removable drives. Also Easy2Boot multiboot Flash drives work better if the drive is a Removable drive because I can run all my Windows Install ISOs from a Removable USB flash drive using Easy2Boot.

 

[ssi]

One essential piece of information is missing. Are these drives all reported as Fixed disks (Local Disk) or Removable under Windows. This is important because Windows8ToGo does not work properly on Removable drives. Also Easy2Boot multiboot Flash drives work better if the drive is a Removable drive because I can run all my Windows Install ISOs from a Removable USB flash drive using Easy2Boot.

 

[brightside]

here's the list of top 6 flash drives ,with the transfer speed of 70 Mb (Y)

http://www.etechmag.com/2012/11/30/top-6-fastest-usb-30-flash-drives-20122013.html

Good information. Thanks for posting here as well.

 

[xerces8]

I have a SanDisk Cruzer Extreme 64GB and it is great.
But there are problems with it:
- the first was broken, I had to replace it
- it has some compatibility problems with certain USB controllers

See thread on SanDisks forum: http://forums.sandisk.com/t5/All-SanDisk-USB-Flash-Drives/Brand-new-Extreme-USB-3-0-64-GB-unusable/td-p/281628

 

[ExpertNovice]

The test results of this review and my test results result in a significant difference with two of the reviewed drives. Could this due to my not having an SSD installed drive?

Specifically, Tom's tests show the "Toshiba TransMemory-Ex 32 GB" to be twice as fast as the "Patriot Rage XT 32 GB" drive on the sequential write and my tests show the opposite.

While our respective systems will result in differences the differences between the two USB drives shouldn't a comparison of two drive be roughly the same?

Tom's sequential read/write test.
Toshiba has a of 102.8 MBps (2.1x faster)
Patriot is a dismal 49.5 MBps.

My test
USBDeview.
Toshiba Write: 11.42 Read: 50.05
Patriot Write: 22.21 Read: 99.48 (2x faster)

File copy. 2 files (960,542,499 bytes and 960,542,499 bytes
Toshiba Write: 16.21
Patriot Write: 39.65 (2.44x faster)

Testing notes:
1. I don't have an SSD drive.
2. Both drives are formatted with 32 MB sector sizes. (Small files are almost 1 GB).
3. Both drives were tested in the same slot.
4. In all cases five tests were executed. The average is reported.
5. For the file copy the same two files were copied from the same location.

The Toshiba is being returned tomorrow so further testing will be impossible. However, if anyone has an explanation for the differences, let me know.

 

[ericjohn004]

I am really, REALLY disappointed they didn't include any Super Talent USB 3.0 drives. The new RC4, or even the old RC8 would absolutely crush these USB 3.0 drives. Granted, they are a good bit more expensive. But still, they are some of the most popular drives out there.

For example, in the same Crystal Disk Mark test as used here, my RC4 get's 258Mb/s Read, 134Mb/s Write, 30Mb/s 4k Read, and 61Mb/s 4k Write. That's right I said Sixty-One Mb/s 4k Write.

It may not be as fast in sequential writes as some of the other fastest drives seen here, but it's just as fast in sequential reads, and it totally blows all the others away with 4k Reads/Writes.

The RC4 is actually Windows2Go certified because it has such excellent 4k performance. It's so fast it can run an OS like Windows 8 seemlessly.

I just can't believe they left one of the most popular and THE fastest drive out of this review. No doubt it would have beat the Sandisk by a couple hundred points.

 

[ericjohn004]

And if you test with 4k QD16 or 4kQD32, the RC4 only gets faster. If any of you is looking for the absolute fastest USB 3.0 drive in terms of overall Sequential AND Random performance, the Super Talent Express RC4 is what it's called. And it's amazing.

I've done research on USB 3.0 drives for the past 2 years and I've found none that are faster all around than this drive. Some have a little faster sequential speeds, but none can beat it's Random 4k results. Great for running Linux or some portable OS on.