USB Flash Drive

[LunarMist]

Is it just me or are the new ones really sucky? I bought a Sandisk cruzer a few weeks ago and recently noticed that write speeds are less than 4GB/sec. :eekers:

WTF, are they using quadruplicate level flash or something? It is slower than some flash drives five years ago and slower than an older Sandisk. Are there any fast-writing 8GB flash drives that are reasonably economical?

 

[Stereodude]

4GB/sec... You have some lofty standards...

 

[LunarMist]

It is slower than a snail. I ran a benchmark, but it is still in progress and graying out. Finally...

 

[time]

We had this discussion last year:

http://www.storageforum.net/forum/showthread.php?t=7757

I picked up another Verbatim 4GB for $US10, but whereas the older one peaked at 15.4MBs writes, the new one can only manage 11.6MB/s.

Reads are slightly trimmed as well, dropping from 27.7MB/s to 25MB/s.

So maybe the trend for USB flash performance is continuing decline?

 

[LunarMist]

Sure, but what is a good flash drive now? Maybe I should just use a micro SDHC card and an adapter. :bsmurf:

 

[time]

That would be pretty silly. MicroSDHC guaranteed minimum write speed is defined in the 'Class' descriptor and the fastest is 8x, i.e. 8MB/s.

Some exceed this comfortably, but good luck getting your hands on one.

 

[LunarMist]

Why is it silly? I have a Class (6) 8GB that writes at about 10MB/sec. Are all micro SDHC cards really slow now?

 

[time]

My memory failed, the maximum available now is Class 10.

Otherwise, I think what I wrote is clear enough. For instance, I've seen someone claim 14MB/s write for a Sandisk 8GB Class 4 card, which is considerably faster than most Class 6 cards on the market.

Unfortunately, I was only able to buy a Sandisk Class 2 card - admittedly, that could be because I'm not in the US. Not that it matters in phones, of course.

 

[LiamC]

Funny y'all should mention this.

SanDisk Ultra and Extreme SD/SDHC cards comfortably exceed their rated class speeds. Some of their normal SD card range does as well, but some do not, or the packaging omits to mention that it does anyway.

PQI is another that sells 150X (CD ROM speed) cards, putting the reads in mid 20MB/s and write in the low 20's.

And as for the Cruzers, I've got an old Cruzer Micro 2GB (the black case with retractable nib) that does 30MB/s reads. A 4 GB Cruzer that is about a year newer only does about 20MB/s. And the newer ones are worse still.

I suppose the girlies must like 'em--they're larger and take longer to do their stuff...

:-o :lol: :diablo:

 

[Stereodude]

Most flash drive makers have been targeting cheap over performance because as it turns out most people aren't willing to pay for performance.

 

[ddrueding]

Well I'm now in the market for a 32GB fast one. The 8GB it is replacing was a Flash Voyager, and price isn't significant. Anyone know what the fastest is?

Ha! Voyager GTR

Not cheap, that. But 34MB/s reads and 28MB/s writes

 

[time]

How about 234MB/s reads and 161MB/s writes?

Review here measured 245MB/s and 98MB/s.

The cheaper Express model, while slower, still blows away the Voyager GTR.

 

[Santilli]

Anyone have a 3.0 gig 8 gig or larger flash drive they like, that isn't 300 dollars?

 

[ddrueding]

I assume you mean USB3.0 8GB+? I have the 64GB version of this and really like it.

 

[Santilli]

Thanks

I think I'll use some old drives from my laptops, put them in external housings, and use them to boot 7. Currently partitioning a 40 gig, and, I think I'll take the Kingspec PATA drive that's kind of slow, and put 32 bit on it, and 64 bit on the 40 gig.

 

[Pradeep]

Will Win 7 boot from an external (removeable) disk?

 

[CougTek]

No, it won't. The best you can do is to put a Win7 inside a VM (with Virtual Box) and then run it on the USB drive, but you'll need another OS on the internal drive to boot off first.

 

[Mercutio]

Will Win 7 boot from an external (removeable) disk?

WinPE will. And you can boot from a .VHD. I suspect that it can happen from a removable drive just as easily as an internal one, though I must admit that I haven't tried.

 

[time]

No, it won't. The best you can do is to put a Win7 inside a VM (with Virtual Box) and then run it on the USB drive, but you'll need another OS on the internal drive to boot off first.

Jesus. Are you sure? I was planning on booting from a USB image as an emergency backup. This has worked when the drive is internal, but I need it to work when it's USB-connected.

 

[Bozo]

Found this via Google.

 

[Santilli]

I followed something similar, but used a USB hard drive, rather then a flash drive.

I also kind of am thinking a PATA SSD is pretty much the same as an IDE drive.

I tried changing the boot order in the bios, and, the computer would not boot off the external USB drive, even though the bios says you can boot from a USB HDrive.

When I reinstalled windows, I used an old IDE DVD player, and, Windows installed. DD left an IDE cable in place, and, if this was going to be a problem, I would include the cost of an extra CD IDE
and leave it in the case.

I guess I'll look more closely at the flash drive procedure, and see what I did differently.

 

[Bozo]

Found this via Google.

This only alows you to boot the Windows 7 setup from USB, not the operating system.

Sorry

 

[Santilli]

That's what I was trying to do, but, using a PATA hard drive in a USB enclosure.

 

[LunarMist]

Holy cow, but why?

 

[CougTek]

Just use two partitions : one small for your OS and programs and one large for your data. OR one SSD for your OS and programs and one mecanical hard drive for your data. Once you've finished installing your OS and programs on the small volume, make an image of it with either Acronis True Image or Macrium Reflect and save it both on the data volume AND on an external hard drive. Also, do not forget to create a bootable rescue CD for your imaging program, in case your OS no longer boots in the future.

Make regular images of your small bootable partition, but keep the original one.

When you'll unavoidably screw up your OS, just reload the last image you made of your small booting partition. If you end up discovering that the last image you made his somehow slightly corrupted and always send you back to a screwed up OS, then just reload the original image you created when everything was fresh and new.

Your OCZ disk explodes? Your Seagate's hard drive turns into a brick? Buy another one and load the image from external drive.

Can't afford a downtime? Buy a spare unit and use Acronis TI to perform a daily disk clone.

See, no reason to spend hours on Google, looking for a way to hack the registry to force Windows 7 to boot from a USB drive. You'll be able to safely attempt otherwise temerarious operation like installing the SP1 for Windows 7 without worry.

 

[ddrueding]

... OR one SSD for your OS and programs and one mecanical hard drive for your data. Once you've finished installing your OS and programs on the small volume, make an image of it with either Acronis True Image or Macrium Reflect and save it both on the data volume AND on an external hard drive. Also, do not forget to create a bootable rescue CD for your imaging program, in case your OS no longer boots in the future.

This is of course very sound advice. What I would like to set up is a bootable partiton on the mechanical drive that is the rescue disk with an automated restoration script (with a single "OK" prompt of course).

 

[Bozo]

This sounds like a good solution:

From Acronis..

Acronis® Nonstop Backup™ This must have feature has been expanded to support Acronis Secure Zone®, enabling you to recover on the fly, wherever you are, to any point in time, from a secure partition on your hard drive, even if your operating system has failed. (Note: requires working hard disk drive).

 

[time]

What I would like to set up is a bootable partiton on the mechanical drive that is the rescue disk with an automated restoration script (with a single "OK" prompt of course).

BounceBack does this for you. The only snag is that it insists on partitioning the backup drive first, after which you can just resize the boot partition and use the rest for your data. I set this up and tested it on a PC with a 120GB SSD and a 2TB HDD.

(Note: requires working hard disk drive)

BounceBack does not require a working drive, you can boot from the backup drive directly, either to test it or automatically if the primary drive fails.

However, it handles versioned backups separately from the boot image.

 

[Stereodude]

Any suggestions for high capacity / fast USB 3.0 flash drives?

 

[Mercutio]

I've tried four USB3 flash drives (Transcend, Kingston, Patriot and one I don't recall). They all seem to transfer data at around 70 - 75MB/sec, which is suspiciously identical to the top speed on my USB 3 SATA drive cradle. I'm not completely convinced since my sample size is three PCs with two different chipsets but I think that might be a real-world limit for USB 3.

 

[time]

I'm pretty sure I've seen >100MB/s with spinning disks and USB 3 (reads rather than writes).

Stereodude, what aspects of performance are important to you? Reads vs writes, large files vs small files?

You can see results of different testing profiles here.

Writing small files shows up the wannabes, although as Ddrueding has pointed out previously, your use case may be write-once-read-many.

Based on the above test, Patriot products appear to have poor latency but the Adata Nobility and Mach Xtreme FX ranges are very good. Of course, ultimate write performance is heavily dependent on flash drive capacity.

16GB Adata Nobility N05

 

[Mercutio]

Even 70MB/sec is pretty damned good for most needs. I did think stuff would be faster.

I have a 128GB Patriot Supersonic that I kind of hate because it's so damned big, but since I could eliminate three other flash drives I was carrying I guess I shouldn't complain too much.

 

[MaxBurn]

I picked up a 32gb patriot supersonic recently and it seems normal sized for this sort of thing. It gets warm during use. Noticeably faster even under USB2, my other USB drives must be terrible.

 

[Mercutio]

It's substantially bigger than my Sandisk Cruzer Contour and probably weighs twice as much as the 4GB PNY Attache drives I used to carry. It's large enough that it can be difficult to fit something in adjacent USB ports.

 

[Mercutio]

Also, for anybody who has a spare 8GB flash drive, there's a thing floating in various places that's called mObscene, which is the most ridiculously useful collection of techie tools I've ever seen in one place.

 

[Handruin]

Also, for anybody who has a spare 8GB flash drive, there's a thing floating in various places that's called mObscene, which is the most ridiculously useful collection of techie tools I've ever seen in one place.

That sounds interesting; do you have a direct link to it by chance? I've googled a bit but I'm not seeing anything. I'm getting hits for Marilyn Manson.

 

[Mercutio]

I found it on a well-known torrent site.

 

[CougTek]

Well, the one with the buccaneers' ship doesn't find it. Only shows Marilyn Manson songs.

 

[Mercutio]

Dammit I've seen it at least two places.

 

[CougTek]

I've found it, but it will take a while to download. There's an 8GB and a 16GB version and I think I've found the bigger version. 13 compressed 1GB files from a free (meaning slow) file sharing web site. I hope I won't be limited to a single file per day. I know I can only do one at a time.