Not All USB Flash Drives Are Created Equal

[Jason Dunn]

In February of this year, while browsing through TigerDirect.ca, I spotted a Transcend 8 GB USB Flash drive (http://www.transcendusa.com/Products/ModDetail.asp?ModNo=131&LangNo=0) for only $89 CAD (it's now selling for $119 CAD (http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/searchtools/item-Details.asp?EdpNo=2749424&sku=T555-1112) - curious!) , which was well over $50 less than any other 8 GB drive at the time. I normally opt for SanDisk USB Flash drives, but I figured one USB Flash drive is as good as another one in most cases, so what did I have to lose? It turns out the differences are much bigger than I would have expected. Copying a folder of 119 photos, 422 MB in total size, displayed some huge speed differences between the 8 GB Transcend USB Flash drive and the 2 GB SanDisk USB Flash drive I used for comparison purposes. The images below tell the story.

http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/USB-transcend.JPG

http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/USB-sandisk.JPG

As you can see, the SanDisk drive is 4.29 times faster than the Transcend drive. Getting 8 GB of storage for $89 is great, but not if it takes forever to fill it up. Next time, I think I'll spend a little more money and get a SanDisk USB Flash drive instead - they understand high performance.

[jeffd]

yea, this is pretty common knowledge that has been repeated on woot.com when ever a cheap usb stick is put up for sale. It was also covered on a web page that was popular for its windows vista speedboost review (I think it was even linked here once).

It sort of goes the same way with flash memory too, a cheap SD card can be slow as molasses.

[Jason Dunn]

yea, this is pretty common knowledge

Well Jeff, then this article is for everyone else that isn't as full of "common knowledge" as you, m'kay?

[chrisjp]

Hi,

Its not so much the price, but the type of flash memory that they use. All of the “readyBoost” usb flash drives specifically use fast flash, as where the others generally mix and match depending on supply availability.

In this case, the Sandisk flash drive was most likely embedded with fast flash, although this is not to say that all Sandisk drives would be, unless clearly specified.

***URL edited out mod JD***

[jeffd]

yea, this is pretty common knowledge

Well Jeff, then this article is for everyone else that isn't as full of "common knowledge" as you, m'kay?

hehe, I didn't quite want to sound so negative, you just caught me drifting off to sleep so I made my post short and simple.