Can anybody point me toward some good, fast USB keychain flash drives?
I'm currently using a really fast Samsung 1GB unit that works great, but when I tried to move over to a 2GB Lexar Firefly, I found that Firefox was unbearably slow. So slow, in fact, that the drive is basically useless for this purpose.
Unfortunately, there's no real way to compare most drives through online shopping, since they're all advertised as "high-speed USB 2.0". But we all know some are faster than others, right?
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There's already quite a few posts about this.
Corsair Voyages GT is popular around here. A while back, John also said Geil Davids were the fastest at the time.
corsair...
Bought one 2 weeks ago and its one of the best I ever had. But cruzer is good too.
"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate
But cruzer is good too.
Yea, except for the bloody huge light.
I just wanna smash the thing.
I like the light myself
As I type this I see the light and it reminds me that the drive is still plugged in and active.
It makes it harder for me to lose it as well since if I get up from a machine to leave it gets my attention.
I tend to lose things tiny things
Tim
Things have got to get better, they can't get worse, or can they?
Personally I use the Flash Voyager GT
The only complaint is that it makes it difficult to plug something into the usb port directly above or below it as it is rather thick.
Based on reviews on the web, the top 3 are probably,...
Corsair Flash Voyager GT
OCZ Rally (not sure of model)
Geil David (not sure of model)
Just google for flash drive reviews.
RE: "they're all advertised as "high-speed USB 2.0""
Look for the rated read write speeds, they should be in the 30+Mbs range.
The slower ones are usually below 20 Mbs.
"Because they stand on a wall and say, 'Nothing is going to hurt you tonight. Not on my watch.'" (A Few Good Men)
Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous.(Albert Einstein)
Yes, I can also recommend the Flash Voyager GT 4GB version. Very fast and durable. Can't go wrong with this one.
-IP
I have a 'Sandisk Cruzer Contour 8GB'.
It's not very cheap, but fast and a u3 drive.
I second the Cruzer Contour. I have the same 8GB model and it's fast, sturdy and thin so it doesn't get in the way of over/under USB ports. It's on the wide side, so it can get in the way of closely spaced side-by-side ports.
HD Tune: SanDisk U3 Contour Benchmark
Transfer Rate Minimum : 17.8 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 27.5 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 24.9 MB/sec
Access Time : 0.8 ms
Burst Rate : 19.4 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 13.9%
formerly rayven01
I just got a sale e-mail from buy.com -- they've got that 8GB Sandisk Cruzer Contour for under $90. http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=204353082
That's about 20 less than I paid for mine.
formerly rayven01
you got to be kidding me...I just picked mine up last week form wally world, 70 bucks
...cook, chef, culinary sponge, traveler, volunteer, missionary
Hel-Mart? *shudder*
"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rick Cook
Take a look at https://portableapps.com/node/9870
Many people submitted their tests. Based on them and on the price, I went for a 4Gb Sandisk Cruzer Micro, 30€, quite fast and much cheaper than the Corsair GT.
Anybody using an SD card? Just as an experiment, I took a pretty fast 256MB SD card I had lying around, plugged it into a USB card reader, and loaded portable Firefox on it. It was actually quite usable. Didn't feel as fast as the Samsung I'm using, but it was MUCH faster than the Lexar Firefly I tried.
I only need to read this on my Mac at home and on this particular work PC, If I could use an SD card, it would be that much more portable, and probably cheaper overall. A lot of PCs have SD readers built in these days, so I may well go in this direction.
I was thinking to put dsl onto it.
Insert original signature here with Greasemonkey Script.
By "dsl" do you mean a tiny version of Linux?
Anyway, I ordered a "133x" 2GB DaneElec SD card to run Firefox and a couple other things off of. Assuming it's reasonably fast, I'll start carrying it in my wallet instead of having yet another object on my keychain:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Credit-Card-SD-Holder/