Testbed and Methods
We used the following test programs:
- FC-Test version 1.0
- FC-Test version 2.0
- IOMeter version 2003.02.15
The testbed was configured like follows:
- Albatron PX865PE Pro mainboard
- Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz CPU
- IBM DTLA-307015 15GB hard disk drive
- Radeon 7000 32MB graphics card
- 256MB DDR SDRAM
- Microsoft Windows XP SP2
We will use two versions of FC-Test to be able to compare the results of the flash drives with those that we have tested earlier.
Note that not the brand new the USB drives that we have already tested before are marked with blue color in the tables.
Performance in Intel IOMeter
Sequential Read & Write Patterns
We’ll start out with the synthetic IOMeter benchmark. This pattern measures the drive’s sequential read and write speed on data blocks of different size (from 0.5 to 1024KB).
The diagram shows that the Super Talent Pico-A has the highest sequential read speed, over 30MB/s. The leader is followed by the Super Talent Pico-C, ATP Petito, and Transcend’s JetFlash V90 and V90с. The A-Data T730 is fast too, having a sequential read speed of over 20MB/s. Seven drives have a maximum speed lower than 15MB/s – not fast by today’s standards.
The Transcend JetFlash 185 has the highest sequential write speed. Besides it, three more drives – Transcend’s JetFlash V90 and V90с, and the ATP Petito – made it to 10MB/s. Five flash drives have a sequential write speed of lower than 5MB/s – that’s obviously not enough for today.
