USB 2 Flash Drives Speed Comparison
USB 2 flash drive speeds are all over the map. Sure, you can find yourself a 512mb or 1gb drive practically anywhere except 7/11 but do you know how it compare against all the other ones out there?
USB 2 flash drive prices keep dropping, storage sizes keep climbing and capacities are similar but performance?
This extensive USB 2 flash drive performance comparison from Ars Technica gives you an idea how much these drives vary in read and write speeds.
Some notable excerpts from their article.
“Flash memory prices have dropped and memory densities have risen making the average drive size much larger. Many manufacturers have included special software to make Flash drives easier and more useful. With all these factors, it can be awfully difficult to decide which is best for you just by looking at the drive and the packaging. It would be easy to make an assumption that all drives are pretty much the same and that shopping for the best price is the smartest way of deciding. Even if the manufacturer publishes performance specifications on their product, how can you be sure that it actually performs up to their numbers?”
Read Speed
“all drives start off rather slow at the rather small file size of 512 bytes. Not including the Transcend DSC and the SimpleTech Bonzai, all eight remaining drives have a minimum read speed of around 400KB/sec (+/- 100KB/sec). Of these Elite 8, most quickly rocket their read speeds to 10MB/sec or faster at the 32KB file size. By the 256KB file size, virtually all drives have hit their maximum read speed.
The drive with the fastest read speed is the Lexar JumpDrive Lightning which peaks out at a blazing 22MB/sec! Nipping closely at Lexar’s heels are the Verbatim Store ‘n’ Go Pro and the Kingston DataTraveler Elite which both fall just shy of the 21MB/sec mark. The rest of the bunch also fared very well with the remaining having top speeds between 16MB/sec and 19MB/sec.”
Write Speed
In a nutshell, they all tend to write much slower than they read. Most drives also tend to ramp up much more slowly than they do in the read tests. Some drives did not hit their maximum write speed until writing 64MB files while others had even higher average speeds at over 350MB!
If speed is no object the Lexar Jumpdrive Lightning usb flash drive beat all comers by a significant margin plus it’s so shiiiiiny.