Nine USB 3.0 Flash Drives For Road Warriors

[pschmid]

The best ultra-portable USB 3.0 storage products from 16 to 128 GB square off in a grand comparison. We found wildly disparate transfer rates ranging from 200 MB/s down to a snail’s pace. At the end, though, two products rose to the top of our list.

Nine USB 3.0 Flash Drives For Road Warriors : Read more

 

[spectrewind]

Conclusion: This article ignores encryption.

The article is a complete failure. You THG people ignored encryption as a metric. Why??!!
Flash drives are cheap. Company information and regulatory items (HIPAA for example) are priceless.

I'm a "road warrior" that depends on a flash drive for my daily work: IRONKEY. My employer provides it. I am legally required to use it. It is hardware encrypted. The drive might be stolen or lost, but the data will not seen by any unauthorized user.

If I lose my drive, the physical media is lost. I have medical databases that I am required to keep secret via government regulation. My drive will wipe itself after 10 incorrect login attempts.
Do any of the reviewed drives on THG do this?

 

[sudeshc]

Extremely good read, what i liked was that the companies are not making false claims anymore most of them performed as was claimed.

 

[sudeshc]

[citation][nom]spectrewind[/nom]Conclusion: This article ignores encryption.The article is a complete failure. You THG people ignored encryption as a metric. Why??!!Flash drives are cheap. [/citation]

This in my opinion is altogether a different topic and should be covered in different article where the encryption also as well as over performance be compared.

 

[tacoslave]

if lacie offered that drive for cheaper id be all over that like flies on dogshit.

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]sudeshc[/nom]This in my opinion is altogether a different topic and should be covered in different article where the encryption also as well as over performance be compared.[/citation]

Agreed, I'll pass that feedback along to the author.

 

[Sphex]

If you actually read the article, you would know that the SuperTalent SuperCrypt encrypts its data with a password, like the IRONKEY. Maybe you should read.

 

[spectrewind]

[citation][nom]Sphex[/nom]If you actually read the article, you would know that the SuperTalent SuperCrypt encrypts its data with a password, like the IRONKEY. Maybe you should read.[/citation]


I did read the article. One drive supporting cryto does not a metric make, which I mentioned. That feature is an anomaly and not a fundamental feature (metric) of the article.

"Maybe you should read."
Reading is good. Comprehension is even better. I suggest you begin there, since you obviously cannot do that.

 

[injected_metal]

IRONKEY. My employer provides it. I am legally required to use it. It is hardware encrypted. The drive might be stolen or lost, but the data will not seen by any unauthorized user.

Your post reads like an advertisement and you complain that they didn't do an encryption comparison when only 1 drive supports it at hardware level. On top of that cant you read, this is a USB 3.0 test, ironkey only does 2.0. Furthermore your employer provides your drive so what difference would it make if they said your ironkey was a slow but safe piece of $#!t? This is an everyday-user drive roundup for fast file transfer, not a business specific roundup that would be useless to most tom's readers. You said it yourself, your company provides secure storage since they expect you to move important files. Typical users won't need this and if they do the decision most likely will be out of their hands. Additionally in a security environment the protection far outweighs the need for speed, so the test metric would be completely different than how consumer grade drives would be tested.

tl;dr
You don't seem to comprehend the use of your drive and what features the owner actually values.

 

[willgart]

some test with encryption enabled are missing. what is the impact of an encrypted drive? what are the encryption option?
we do not always looking for speed, we are also looking for backup or archive of sensitive data.
and other peoples are looking for speed only, for sure, because they hate loosing time in data transfert

but the same questions are also for classic HDD, not only USB keys.

 

[Bolbi]

I purchased a 16GB A-DATA S102. It's not a premium product, but it does receive a significant performance boost from USB 3.0 (according to other reviewers; my USB 3.0 laptop is still in Fedex's hands). The drives in this review, I think, are for those who need only the best features and performance. The average user can still get better performance out of a "regular" USB 3.0 flash drive.

 

[alidan]

i have a request, im on the Benchmark Results: Sequential Data Throughput page, and im looking at these 3 bars, and the name, its a bit hard to tell what goes to what without really looking at it hard. in the future can you 2 tone the name area when the bars are like this? like white and gray, just so people can look at see these bars go to this this product. a graph like this doesn't happen often, because i know i would have said something earlier if there was.

please at least think about it.

 

[burnley14]

Super Talent's SuperCrypt, which combines encryption and attractive performance without any significant weaknesses in performance

Whoops. I'm guessing it was supposed to say "attractive design" perhaps?

 

[gokanis]

I did read the article. One drive supporting cryto does not a metric make, which I mentioned. That feature is an anomaly and not a fundamental feature (metric) of the article.

"Maybe you should read."
Reading is good. Comprehension is even better. I suggest you begin there, since you obviously cannot do that.

Really, attacking someone makes you feel superior, go play on the console forums.

 

[marek dabek]

Did you check the USB bus during your benchmarks? Device's performance drop may be caused by link power states transitions during transfers. To realiably compare these devices you need to make sure that all devices operate in U0 all the time.

 

[jegarst]

I have both a 16 (as opposed to the reviewed 32) GB SuperCrypt and a 32 GB Express Drive from SuperTalent. I only installed the driver for the former, since the latter seemed to work with it.

I recently reviewed a USB 3 cable bought from Amazon. In that review I used that SuperTalent 32 GB USB 3 Express drive for benchmarking. Funny, my admittedly caching read numbers were much higher (see http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003HC8H26/ref=cm_rdp_product): "Using two runs of Totusoft's LAN speed test v2.05 [...], I got read speeds of 115 and 145 MBps (Mega-Bytes) from a 32 GB Super Talent USB 3 'Express Drive'." It would seem that the read number is limited by the SuperTalent 32 GB USB 3 Express drive's read ability, so this number should be meaningful. I didn't explore any issues with 1KB definitions and how they might affect speed with the Totusoft's LAN speed test v2.05. A second inquiry (http://www.amazon.com/review/R2QSWJQUXUEBY9/ref=cm_cd_notf_message?ie=UTF8&cdForum=Fx2T0RBSYKS92DF&cdPage=1&cdThread=Tx289AQ7W2LXBUM#Mx2ZALEYJ9F39WV) led to a rerun of these speed tests; that found "LAN Speed test (2.05, Totusoft.com) showed 456.79 MBps write (caching on) and 145.08 MBps read (Caching on) (MBps=MBytes per sec)." With my test parameters noted (using a Asus P6X58D Premium mb), my numbers seem higher. My 16GB SuperCrypt was even faster reading (MBps (Mega-Bytes): 115.04 (write, caching off) 165.64 (read, caching off) than my 32 GB Express Drive, but that was performed under different conditions with another version of LAN Speed test. Old, but same day (and same, but unknown LAN Speed test version) results using the 32 GB Express Drive found the following: MBps (Mega-Bytes): 514.35 (write, caching on) 148.12 (read, caching on).

 

[Guest]

It would have been nice to see a popular USB 2 drive in the benchmarks for best comparison

 

[ilysaml]

i don't understand the meaning of NOT SUPPORTING WIN 7 X64... super-talent drive

 

[David 617]

i have the patriot supersonic and wow, it's fast, 70mbs write 100mbs read.

 

[leninvaros]

I need some help guys.There is no safely remove option for this drive in windows 7.I contacted Adata and the answer was this:"The N005 has dual controllers, which leads Windows 7 to believe that it is a SSD/HDD. You are still able to safely remove the drive but must be down from the task bar."
Of course I'm still unable to do that.

 

[Guest]

Maybe just for my particular situation, but I think the physical size is also an important consideration to purchase a USB drive. I'm frequently on the move in my job and need my laptop and USB drive (with encrypted documents, virtual machines, ...) with me at most times. Too bulky sticks or enclosures with cables do not survive long in such conditions (eg risk of breaking when moving laptop from one meeting to another - disconnecting with open documents is not truly an option).
Many company laptops also have limited USB ports (3) and little available room around them making a drive that does not block neighbouring ports mandatory if you still want to connect a mouse and/or a phone charger.
Looking at the detailed drive specs I see only the QPI & Patriot are compact enough to do just that so for me these are the only viable options. I assume their lower performance comes from their compactness, so it would be nice to see the drives also categorized in physical size.