Fastest USB drive available? (4-8GB)

Discuss hardware related to portable usage, including the kind of storage devices people use, and how they use them.
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Cantello
Posts: 6
Joined: Sun Jul 22, 2007 3:15 am

Fastest USB drive available? (4-8GB)

#1 Post by Cantello »

Hi all!

I am currently using a Sandisk Cruzer Titanium 4GB as my USB drive, and while it sure is neat to have all one's applications and documents at hand, it is rather slow to use.
For example, when opening Firefox from the USB drive, it takes at least one minute to open and it extremely sluggish when using it.
The Cruzer is admittedly not one of the fastest drives out there but als not on the lower end, plus I really liked its form factor and rugged looks.
But to be useful, I need a faster drive, preferrably one that is also not too big as I use it on my keychain.

I have found several so far: Do you know perhaps of comparable drives or what are your experiences with the usability of USB drives with regular applications like OpenOffice or Firefox?

Looking forward to comments! :-)

Helge.

cmmehl
Posts: 127
Joined: Sun Feb 19, 2006 7:26 am

PQI

#2 Post by cmmehl »

I really understand your agony about a slow stick. I had the same experience with a Voyager - looked nice, but slow as hell.

Right now I'm using a PQI 4 GB, and from the many sticks I have had this one is the fastest, I'm really amazed.

I don't have any datasheets to refer to, and this is strictly my subjective judgement. But take it from a user who runs FirefoxPortable from it on a daily basis, without complaints about loading or usage speed.

All I can say is: speed matters ...

I would also be interested in other's opinions.

Cheers
Chris

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teobromina
Posts: 172
Joined: Tue Jan 02, 2007 12:12 pm
Location: Spain

#3 Post by teobromina »

Look at this:

http://www.takems.com/products.php?cate ... _HighSpeed

I think it is the best I had. It is not only fast but well designed. And there are up to 8 Gb.

Regards.

*JT.

pmccollum
Posts: 9
Joined: Sun Sep 02, 2007 10:06 pm

seriously?

#4 Post by pmccollum »

the stats on those takems drives look horrible.

the corsair flash voyager GT(red) is amazing and statistically it is the fastest flash drive around.

34 read 25 write

the closest runner ups are the
ocz drive
a-data has a really fast one but i haven't seen it in stock anywhere.
then the corsair voyager(blue)


sandisk cruzer titanium comes is near the same class but it's still ahead of the takems drives you have listed. there was a takems turbo that had okay stats but it's still waaaay below the big 5 above.

there's a list at http://www.everythingusb.com/hardware/S ... Drives.htm but it's missing some of the notable speedy players i listed..

you can bet good money that any drive that doesn't list it's speed is about 12mb read 7mb write.

if you are moving any number of small files often you will want to shell out the money for the faster drives. i tried to load my my transcend "jet"flash drive and it took 8 hours to load 2gbs onto it. mostly due to xampp and many small php files. if you really want to live portable, invest.

i don't know why you've had problems with your GT. I'm on my 3rd voyager and they rock. i've also gotten my cubemate to buy one after hooking him on portables and then loaning him my voyager for a test drive. i did have a bad GT that would kinda die thru heavy transfers but i got it exchanged and bought another one after that. i wish they had a better form factor but the speed is unrivaled.

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Local
Posts: 238
Joined: Fri Aug 03, 2007 3:48 am

#5 Post by Local »

I know this may be a little big for you but I'd personally recommend
http://www.saverstore.com/productinfo/P ... trat=12876

It's still very small but can't fit on your keychain.

I would definitely prefer this over a flash drive for both speed and durability though.

Other than that, my Samsung 4GB from the same store( I never knew the model, it was the cheapest one they had) is pretty fast, I've never had a problem with a lack of speed, even transferring 2/3 GB at a time.

Mart
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Nov 01, 2007 2:00 pm
Location: Australia

#6 Post by Mart »

Local wrote:I know this may be a little big for you but I'd personally recommend
http://www.saverstore.com/productinfo/P ... trat=12876

It's still very small but can't fit on your keychain.

I would definitely prefer this over a flash drive for both speed and durability though.
I can second the recommendation for one of these. After buying a cheap 4gb flash drive that turned out to be a howling dog I wasn't confident that a more expenisve model would be much better - it seemed hard to find definitive info about write speeds. I was trying to find out which one to buy when I saw one of these 8gb credit card hard drives on ebay, for about the same price as a 4gb flash drive, so I bought it (this was about 10 months ago). I have formatted in NTFS with compression and have no complaints about performance. Its a bit old school I know, being mechanical instead of solid state, but that kinda appeals to me for some reason. And yes, it doesn't fit on your keyring, but mine travels around in my briefcase, which is where the flash drive would have been anyway, so the size isn't an issue.

Speaking of size if you go a little bigger again you could get one of the 1.8" hard drives (not the more common 2.5") in an external enclosure and then you would have 40gb+ to play with.... :wink:

Cheers,
Mart.

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Local
Posts: 238
Joined: Fri Aug 03, 2007 3:48 am

#7 Post by Local »

Speaking of size if you go a little bigger again you could get one of the 1.8" hard drives (not the more common 2.5") in an external enclosure and then you would have 40gb+ to play with.... Wink
Added to that, a tiny bit bigger too, I love the western digital passports.
I bought my fiancée a mini camera/mp3 player case to carry hers.
Even for a 2.5 inch it seems tiny to carry (for me anyway) but you can have a yummy 160+GB of space =P

Mart
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Nov 01, 2007 2:00 pm
Location: Australia

#8 Post by Mart »

Local wrote:Added to that, a tiny bit bigger too, I love the western digital passports.
I bought my fiancée a mini camera/mp3 player case to carry hers.
Even for a 2.5 inch it seems tiny to carry (for me anyway) but you can have a yummy 160+GB of space =P
Yeah they are pretty sweet aren't they.

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webfork
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Re: Fastest USB drive available? (4-8GB)

#9 Post by webfork »

I'd go for SD cards and a good SD card reader. The reason is because photographers have the most immediate use for high speed flash memory. So SD cards are the mostly likely to be on the cutting edge.

I can't recommend any specific card but its not hard to find one. As well as an SD-to-USB device, which are cheap.

hdlbob
Posts: 6
Joined: Wed Dec 24, 2008 3:03 pm
Location: socal

Re: Fastest USB drive available? (4-8GB)

#10 Post by hdlbob »

Patriot Xporter XT Boost 4GB.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi ... esult=True

The customer reviews at newegg are pretty convincing. Personally, I've got a dozen USB flash drives and the Xporter is by far the fastest.

Hope this helps.

hdlbob
Posts: 6
Joined: Wed Dec 24, 2008 3:03 pm
Location: socal

Re: Fastest USB drive available? (4-8GB)

#11 Post by hdlbob »

Oops! I didn't realize this was an old thread reactivated by a recent post. Here's a link to the 8GB model.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820220252

Price is $23. Free shipping in the US. I don't know what they charge for shipping to UK.

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