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Buying a New Flash Drive

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August 4, 2010 - 10:43am
#1
dhartsoc
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Buying a New Flash Drive

I am trying to find a fast flash drive in the 8 to 16Gb range without spending more than $60. 8Gb has proven adequate for my needs.

Currently I use an 8Gb Sandisk Cruzer Micro. Love that it is retractable and reliable... but it is s-l-o-w. It can take 5 or 6 seconds after I click in an application for a response.
Furthermore I suspect it is wearing out. When I ran some speed tests recently the write speeds were in the 6 to 7MB per second range until late in the test, when they dropped down to 0.1 to 0.3Mb per second. That made the average write speed drop to the 3MB per second range.

I tried to find an OCZ Rally2 Turbo, but cannot find any for sale. Some of Corsairs would probably do but their form factor is a problem for me, they take up too much space as a trade-off for ruggedness.

I cannot find a Kingston DataTraveller HyperX, nor a HyperX2.

It looks as if there are SanDisk Extreme Cruzer Contours available. These were the 3 I found most appealing in price/performance. (actually never having seen a HyperX for sale it may have been outside my price range)

Are there any good bets I am missing. Most interested in excellent read/write speeds in my price range.

Thanks... Dana

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August 4, 2010 - 2:59pm
Mir
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16GB data traveler

i have had no issues with mine and i got mine for 24.99 at Fry's.

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August 4, 2010 - 11:29pm
(Reply to #2)
dhartsoc
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That is good to know. I am

That is good to know. I am taking a second look at the Corsair Voyager GT. Tests seem to show it to be faster then the DataTraveller but its form factor is huge.

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August 5, 2010 - 1:41am
(Reply to #3)
Skitter302
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Staples

Take a Look at these, your price range seems to be more on the 8GB side but you could spot a deal on a 16GB.

8GB at staples Limited time Offer

16GB at staples

8GB at staples

Load the App and Play :evil:

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August 5, 2010 - 10:14am
(Reply to #4)
dhartsoc
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I definitely think my 8Gb

I definitely think my 8Gb Cruzer mini was getting "sick. I moved my Portable Apps from it to an old 4Gb Cruzer Mini. Things run more quickly and the latency issues have largely disappeared. On the other hand I had to delete some apps to fit into the 4Gb drive. Some of the performance increase can be explained by the smaller memory, but not as much as I am seeing IMO.

For now I am going to pick up a SanDisk Extreme Cruzer Contour and see how that performs before considering spending more money for a high-performance USB drive.

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August 5, 2010 - 11:55am
Vandrvekn
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OCZ Diesel 16GB

Well, Newegg has the OCZ Diesel 16GB for $30.99 with free shipping. It's very fast for a low cost drive. I get 30MB/s reads and 14 MB/s writes on large files. It's reliable, also. I've used mine every day for about a year and half with no problems.

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August 5, 2010 - 2:02pm
(Reply to #6)
Mir
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3gen Datatraveler 26..95

come on now.

http://www.buy.com/prod/kingston-16gb-datatraveler-generation-3-g3-usb-f...

Smile

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August 5, 2010 - 3:18pm
(Reply to #7)
NathanJ79
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"Come on now"?

Two things...

1. Buy.com? Who are they? Newegg is well known. Maybe buy.com is too, I don't know, but it's worth an extra four bucks to not have to make a new account, stick with someone I know, and...

2. Kingston ain't OCZ.

Just sayin.

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August 5, 2010 - 6:10pm
(Reply to #8)
Mir
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Buy.com

started around the same time as NewEgg but turned more into a competitor of Amazon minus the indivigual sellers part. Neweggs is expensive for some parts compaired with buy.com. geeks.com pwns them both but deals with refirbs.

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August 6, 2010 - 8:29am
(Reply to #9)
Darkbee
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ebay.com ... not!

I'd definitely trust buy.com over Staples own-brand! Biggrin

Might as well just go buy a drive from Walmart. Smile

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August 6, 2010 - 10:26am
(Reply to #10)
Vandrvekn
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Speed Vs. Cost

If capacity is all you care about, Newegg also has cheaper drives. I'm recommending the OCZ because of its speed for the price. I haven't tried that particular Kingston drive, but an 8GB one that I tested ran at about 1/3 the speed of the Diesel. I'll pay a few bucks more for a faster drive, especially for a 16GB drive.

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August 6, 2010 - 12:11pm
(Reply to #11)
dhartsoc
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I think for my purposes, 8Gb

I think for my purposes, 8Gb is the sweet spot and will go to 16 if that is what it takes to get the drive I want. Performance is the guiding light for me, but not at any cost. So perhaps the metric I am trying to fathom is Performance/Price. I may eventually end up with an OCZ but for now the extreme cruzer contour is my choice to see if it suits my performance needs which are really modest when I think about it.

Slowly coming to the conclusion that the 8Gb Cruzer Micro that I have used for a couple years may have been defective from the beginning. The 4Gb Cruzer Micro I am using now is "SO" much faster. I don't think the difference in speed and latency is entirely due to the difference in capacity.

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August 8, 2010 - 7:57pm
(Reply to #12)
Skitter302
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Staple VS Newegg

Newegg for the win. Way better than Staples.

Bolt 16GB

Load the App and Play :evil:

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August 11, 2010 - 12:57pm
(Reply to #13)
dhartsoc
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For whatever the reason the

For whatever the reason the OCZ drives I wanted to buy do not seem to be available. OCZ ATV Turbo 8gb, and Rally2 Turbo 8gb.

Looks as if I will be picking up a Patriot XPorter XT Boost 8gb. It is available, the price is good, and there is the promise of decent performance.

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August 23, 2010 - 12:16pm
patrick013
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Kingston

Kingston at buy.com usually has frequent sales on c10's
and g2's. Take a look at the sale on the 64gb external SSD.

All have a 5 year warranty, just save the receipt you know.
Never had a problem though. Speed is about 8mbs on a download.
Slower speeds...probably badly fragmented from heavy use.

patrick013

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September 1, 2010 - 5:50pm
(Reply to #15)
dhartsoc
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Finally ordered the Patriot

Finally ordered the Patriot XPorter XT Boost 8gb USB thumb drive from Newegg. Eager to see if the performance will be noticeably better than I am accustomed to. Reviews seem to indicate it is a fast drive. Price was excellent, only $18.99 plus 99 cents shipping. (shipped by wagon train for that price)

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September 8, 2010 - 10:24pm
(Reply to #16)
dhartsoc
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Received the Patriot USB

Received the Patriot USB drive today. It is s-o-o-o- much faster than my 8gb Cruzer Micro.

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September 9, 2010 - 8:22am
(Reply to #17)
Darkbee
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Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Now you can open and close OpenOfficePortable just for the fun of it. Biggrin

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September 9, 2010 - 3:30pm
(Reply to #18)
dhartsoc
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Hmmm.... 22 seconds for Open

Hmmm.... 22 seconds for Open Office to open... My worst offender has been FireFox. Using the 8gb Cruzer Micro it took 1.5-2 minutes for it to open. Now it is similar to Open office or a little bit faster depending on what antivirus program is running on the computer. (I use Avast at home and it really slows Firefox opening.) I am finding this acceptable compared to what I had before. This 8gb Xporter Xt is faster than the 4gb Cruzer Micro I used the past couple weeks after deciding my 8gb Micro was defective.

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October 19, 2010 - 2:35am
(Reply to #19)
mknoeckel
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22 seconds for open OOo?

I had a similar phenomenon though I had to learn that this probably looks to be down to several anti-virus programs in connection with OOo.

I've tried several trial versions for anti-virus programs (AVG, SOPHOS, MC AFFEE and SYMANTEC etc.) Whenever I've installed one of them my entire system and OOo slowed down significant. However as soon I've uninstalled them from my system and cleaned it afterwards, my system and especially OOo became very fast again. So I was keep on looking for a solution and have tried at the end AVAST! which is part of the Google Pack and for free. To my big surprise with AVAST! I couldn't recognize any lack of performance regarding my system nor the start of OOo so I kept it and since I'm happy with a very speedy OOo. (start = 4 sec)

Please try it it out and let me know your thoughts.

MK

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September 9, 2010 - 3:31pm
(Reply to #20)
dhartsoc
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Hmmm.... 22 seconds for Open

Hmmm.... whoops, duplicate post.

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September 9, 2010 - 7:26pm
(Reply to #21)
Mir
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dddddouble

sorry i just had to do that. been a stressful day and now i have no empty flash drives and no $$ for a new one as a monitor takes priority.

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?InvtId=L2335-FB&cm_mmc=geekmail-_-daily... :3

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September 10, 2010 - 3:59pm
(Reply to #22)
patrick013
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buy.com

I still like buy.com

About $30 for a 16gb Kingston
$15 for a 8gb Kingston
$10 for a 4gb Kingston

read is 12mbs, write is 8mbs
I've downloaded 8mbs on a library computer.

you need defraggler if you're stuck opening a program

5 whole year warranty

Save your pennies for the SSD

patrick013

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September 15, 2010 - 1:39pm
(Reply to #23)
OliverK
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you do not need defraggler

you do not need defraggler ona solid state drive. Defraging it will just cause extra writes on a system with limited writes. The fragmentation experienced by solid state drives is more accurately defined as wear-leveling.

Too many lonely hearts in the real world
Too many bridges you can burn
Too many tables you can't turn
Don't wanna live my life in the real world

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October 19, 2010 - 2:22am
(Reply to #24)
mknoeckel
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Read/Write preformance and storage vs. price

I've bought for myself an 32GB flash-drive from INTENSO's High Speed Line.

They indicate on their website reading @ 30 MB/s and writing @ 24 MB/s. The price was approx. 64€ in Europe though I think it is fair as nothing is more annoying then a slow system. The read/write tests I did have resulted in writing approx. 26,84 MByte/s and reading of about 17,55 MByte/s though this is very fast, probably fast then most build in HDD's.

What you pay is what you get, buy cheap means buying twice Smile

MK

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