Gadget review: Ultra fast USB flash drive

You can bid on the USB flash drive by clicking on the images. The auction will end today at 11:00 PM EST.

Parameters:

Brand name: UltimateUSB.com Xingyu Ultra Speed 200x USB 2.0 4GB
Size: 4GB
Read speed: 25-30 MB/s
Write speed: 20-25 MB/s
Technology: SLC (single level cell), dual channel NAND Samsung chips
Chips: Two chips Samsung K9WAG08U1M(A) 2GB x 2 = 4GB
Memory controller: SM3252
Case: full metal, lightweight &durable

Photos:

Full metal case, lightweight & durable

Protection box

Features:

While buying a new USB flash drive, the average customer usually cares only about the price, the look and the storage volume of the drive, but not the data retention (simple said, how many years you can use the drive), the quality of the memory chips and the read/write speed of the USB drive itself. 95% of the USB drives that are currently selling on the market are using the MLC (multi-level cell) technology, which is cheap, but the data retention rate of the NAND flash chips and the read/write speed is very low. The SLC (single-level cell) technology gives the data retention rate 10 times more than MLC (you can read about SLC vs MLC at the official page of Buffalo, one of the major USB drive manufactures; and here is another article on the life of SLC and MLC-based drives), and a significant higher read/write speed. To be exact, the average read speed of MLC-based USB drives is 10-15 MB/s, while SLC gives 20-25 MB/s, sometime to 30 MB/s. The write speed of MLC-based USB drives is even worse, around 8-12 MB/s, while SLC-based drives reach 20-25 MB/s. The only disadvantage of the SLC technology is that the production cost is really high, and after 2007, most of the manufactures of USB drives ceased the production of SLC-based USB drives (except some very hi-end series like Buffalo RUF-S or RUF-R series, Sandisk Ducati Extreme or Corsair Voyager GT).

The UltimateUSB.com Xingyu Ultra Speed 200x USB 2.0 4GB USB drive utilizes Two SLC NAND chips Samsung K9WAG08U1M(A) and gives one of the best read&write speed ever for a USB 2.0 drive. You can refer to these comparisons with other USB drives to have the picture: Pen Drive Reviews, Nirsoft Tests, TestFreaks reviews. Here are some tests done with standard benchmark tools like Flash Memory Toolkit & ATTO Disk Benchmark.

Quality:

The tests of the quality of the memory chips are done with two golden-standards tools: that are H2testw and Flash Memory Toolkit Errors Scan. 2-pass test is done with FMT. Read more why H2testw is the golden standard tool for checking against fake memory chips in USB drives. Here are the screenshots:

Summary:

UltimateUSB.com Xingyu Ultra Speed 200x USB 2.0 4GB with the two chips SLC K9WAG08U1M(A) by Samsung brings one of the best quality USB drive in comparisons with the most USB drives on the market, and is comparable with the very hi-end (and very rare to be found) series of other manufacturers, like the Buffalo RUF-S, RUF-R series, the first Corsair Voyager GT series, the Sandisk Ducati or the OCZ Rally2 Turbo. The UltimateUSB.com Xingyu Ultra Speed 200x however with its more affordable price and high quality build (full metal case) surely will be the best purchase, if you are looking for quality and for the content inside the box, but not the box itself.

Remark:

Specification of the system used for tests:
Laptop CMS Sputnik S19AG7431
CPU: Intel®Core 2Duo P7350 (2*2.0GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 3MB L2 Cache)
Chipset: Intel GM45
Memory: 2GB DDR2 667MHz
HDD / ODD:250GB SATA HDD / DVD Super-Multi
VGA: Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 4500

OS: Windows XP SP3
File system of the USB drive: FAT32

Benchmark and test tools:
Flash Memory Toolkit 1.20
ATTO Disk Benchmark 1.41
H2testw 2.41

You can bid on the USB flash drive by clicking on the images. The auction will end today at 11:00 PM EST.

@ haha.nu

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