Mini USB Flash Drive Review
There are some cheap flash drives being sold now, but not much detail on speeds. I’ve found some in the past to be really slow, and others to be really quick.
I bought three flash drives from Harvey Norman:
- Sandisk Cruzer Micro 4.0 GB
- Sandisk Cruzer Micro 1.0 GB
- Transcend JetFlash V30 1 GB
The two 1GB keys are narrower than the 4GB key, with the JetFlash being the most ‘port friendly’ for when USB ports are jammed up together on a laptop (a complaint with Acer laptops in particular). The 4GB cruzer isn’t large, but is a bit of a fatty.
Speed was tested with HD_Speed v1.5.3.64 from Steel Bytes. This is a nice, free, hard drive speed tester. The results were quite interesting! One thing to note is that write speed testing wipes the drive, so do any testing before putting important data onto it!
- Sandisk Cruzer Micro (with skins) 1.0 GB: 10 MB/s read & 4.7 MB/s write
- Transcend Jetflash V30 1GB: 10 MB/s read & 4.6 MB/s write
- Sandisk Cruzer Micro 4.0 GB: 23 MB/s read & 7.7 MB/s write
So the 4GB key is twice the speed overall, and the two 1GB keys are pretty much identical. If you want a $10 1GB key, then the JetFlash would be the way to go, but for $54 the 4GB Sandisk Cruzer gives more space and is faster.
The Sandisk 4GB key also comes with “U3″ which is a virtual CD with software that can be installed and run on computers as soon as the drive is plugged in. This was a pain in the butt for me as thing were popping up on the desktop, and I think it would cause trouble at work too with the locked down machines we have there. The Sandisk U3 removal software didn’t work for me, but the U3 removal software did. Have a play with U3 before removing it, but it took my 5 minutes to make my mind up about it!
Final Decision: If you want a small key for moving a few files around, go with the Transced JetFlash V30 1GB. If you have bigger files, or want a bit more speed, then the Sandisk Cruzer Micro 4.0GB is a well priced flash drive for the job too.
