best usb flash Memory Drive

[newschool]

I think the Corsair "GT" line is the fastest but its hard to find and very expansive.

I almost pulled the trigger on a Patriot Xporter XT, wich seems to be a good compromise between speed (13mb write and 22mb read) and price per GB.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...ion=xporter+xt&x=0&y=0

Any opinions? Thanks.

 

[newschool]

Quick reply to myself here, found 2 other interesting options :

- Corsair actually have a little bit cheaper GT model, the Flash Voyager GT wich could be interesting at 8GB

- OCZ has something interesting too, the Rally 2. It beats the Xporter XT : http://www.xbitlabs.com/articl...nt/32gb-usb-flash.html
There is even a "Turbo" version wich is even faster http://www.lesnumeriques.com/article-382-3046-141.html

 

[DarkRogue]

Uh, Corsair "GT" and "Voyager GT" are the same thing, I believe.
The Voyager GT 8GB was the fastest and largest flash drive they had, but it's been discontinued. It used SLC chips which are much faster and much more expensive. According to the Corsair representatives, the largest SLC chips were 4GB - they attained the 8GB size by putting two together in dual channel mode. I myself tried to look for this drive to no avail. The Voyager GT 16GB+ use MLC chips which are much slower.

OCZ does indeed have the Rally2 and ATV stuff. I'm not too sure of the difference, but I just bought myself an OCZ ATV Turbo 8GB drive and am very happy with it. It's just around the speed of the Voyager GT 8GB, or even a little bit faster. An OCZ representative also verified that this drive uses SLC chips, which explains why I had to pay $125.99 for it (off ZipZoomFly.) There is a $25 MIR though.

 

[newschool]

Hey thanks for the input. Yeah thats why the Voyager GT is hard to find. I think any 16GB flash usbs needs to use MLC chips, 8GB is the limit for SLC.
Slower (and cheaper) flash usbs are MLC at 8GB wich explains a write of 9~13mb/s in the Xporter XT and Rally 2.

The 16GB Voyager GT is not that bad thought : http://www.cdfreaks.com/review...Review/Benchmarks.html , and it's available on Ebay.

Still I DO have found the best bang for the buck : the Kingsont Hyperx (write 20mb / read 30mb) , only 22$ for 4gb on 44$ for 8GB on the newegg.

 

[DarkRogue]

I looked at the Kingston HyperX briefly as well, those speed claims were pretty good, but I couldn't verify that they used SLC or not, so I strayed away from them. Besides being faster than MLC, they're also much more robust, being able to withstand 10x more read/write cycles (100,000 vs 10,000.) Some quick benchmarks seem to show it is capable of hitting those speeds with larger files though.

One other thing that put me off the HyperX was information I found where some people claimed that the "tab" used to extend the USB head broke and rendered the key useless.

 

[Skott]

I'm looking to get either a 32Gb or a 64Gb usb flash drive myself this holiday season. A 32Gb would be good enough but if a 64Gb can be had for a sweet deal I'd choose it and spend a little more. Not really interested in spending over $100 though so a 32Gb is probably going to be my preferred choice. From what I'm seeing around the net the write speeds for these larger drives is slow. I was looking at the Corsair 32Gb but its write speed is pretty bad apparently. The Patriot Xporter XT 32GB seems to get better reviews as far as the write speed goes but this info is from the NE website so one has to take that with a grain of salt but the positive reviews are clearly far more than those for the Corsair model. So does anyone know which 32/64 Gb usb flash drive is the better one? Any info or links would be greatly appreciated. Hoping to get something on Black Friday but I can wait til closer to Xmas if necessary. Thanks in advance.

Edit: Amazon has the OCZ USB 2.0 32 GB Dual Channel Rally2 Pen Drive (OCZUSBR2DC-32GB) for $69.45 with a $15 rebate making it $54.45 and in stock. They call it a Pen Drive though so not sure if its the same as the one linked in Newschool's 2nd post. Looks like it is. If is then thats not a bad price I'm thinking. I'm going to keep looking around.

 

[DarkRogue]

Well, as you said, the write speeds for all the larger drives are slow. That's due to their use of the cheaper MLC chips. For the fastest write speeds you'd need to go to SLC, which seem to cap out at 8GB. I'm sure there are some MLC drives out there that are getting manageable write speeds though, probably around 10mb/s or so. Pen drive, thumb drives, USB keys, etc, are all different ways of saying the same thing - USB Flash Drives. That said, the only thing I can do is Google for specific drives you're looking at.

It seems both the Corsair Voyager 32GB and the OCZ Rally2 32GB drives have decent write speeds (anywhere from 1mb/s to 15mb/s depending on what you're writing to it.) The Patriot Xporter 32GB seems to write at 7mb/s, but these are very quick Google results. You're not going to find write speeds of 25mb/s+ without paying for SLC.

 

[Skott]

I got a tip on a deal for the 64Gb flash drives from Transcend and Corsair. Anyone got an idea which of the two may be better? I'm digging around for some reviews but havent found any yet.

 

[the DRIZZLE]

Hey I dont want to hijack this thread but I'm also looking for a flash drive. It must have a retractable usb connecter, I hate losing the caps. Im looking for a 32 or 16 gb drive. 32gb prefered.

 

[gba]

Originally posted by: the DRIZZLE
Hey I dont want to hijack this thread but I'm also looking for a flash drive. It must have a retractable usb connecter, I hate losing the caps. Im looking for a 32 or 16 gb drive. 32gb prefered.

I have been using fish line and krazy glue to attach tops to drives so I do not lose them.. works great! I like the Corsair models for their rubberized housing... I always think I am going to trash a drive someday...

 

[the DRIZZLE]

gba thats great lol. I'm looking for something a little neater looking though.

 

[gba]

Originally posted by: the DRIZZLE
gba thats great lol. I'm looking for something a little neater looking though.

Oh I understand.. and I am using a Sandisk Cruzer for Ready Boost. But as far as taking a flash drive with me, I want the rubber and the cap... Dunno, I think the fish line set up ends up looking decent.. utilitarian... I usually get comments from ppl saying they think it is a great idea bc they often misplace their caps. lol, call me a geek, I own that tag anyway.

I'll try to post a pic later on.

Edit: Here is a pic of the Corsair Flash Voyagers on which I connected the caps with fish line. I have experimented with different lengths of fish line, you can hardly see the line on the left side of that first one, the 8GBer I keep attached to my key chain. I discovered that if you keep the line too short, it takes a little manipulating to get the cap lined-up... no biggie, tho, plus the line stays tight to the drive that way (best for key chain). The third one is just the right legnth, imo... The grommets are for color coding, but the different colored hooks do a great job of telling the drives apart from one another. Granted, sometimes I am more careful with the Krazy Glue than others.. not too concerned about neatness, here.. but if you want, you can get them to look very clean.

...I remembered when I first figured this out.. it was when the 256MB Lexar Jump Drives were going for like $80. If I recall, there was a deal at Circuit City, in Fall of 2003 which involved submitting three rebates... People here were complaining bc Lexar was charging $5 for extra caps... and I just said, "hey, let's beat the system and attach the damn caps with fish line!"

 

[azilaga]

I like the Corsair Flash Voyagers, but my 8GB model died after just over a year. Even so, I just got the 32GB model and it's very utilitarian.

 

[newschool]

Like someone said above, I dont think its possible to have a SLC (fast write) chip on something bigger than 8GB.

An other problem with flash drives is that the bigger it is the slower it is, indepedantly of the technology. You guys should post your discovery about higher capacity flash drives here, but I can't help because I wasn't looking for that.

Personnally I needed a flash drive to watch movies so I bought a Patriot Xporter XT 8GB at 23$. The price/performance ratio is very hard to beat because the READ speed is as good as best SLC : I tested it at approx 30mb/s. So basically you wait a little more while copying your movie (approx 15 mb/s) but you will have absolutely no trouble watching, pausing, fast forwarding because of the good read speed.

Btw, If you are in the same situation as me, I think the 32GB version of the Xporter XT is pretty much the same, so I could recommand it : http://www.overclockersonline....ticles&num=2061&pnum=4