Performance

We used the following devices for our comparison:

• OCZ Rally 1GB
• OCZ Mini Kart 1GB
• OCZ Roadster 1GB
• Super Talent RBST 1GB
• Corsair Flash Voyager 512 MB
• Sandisk Cruzer Titanium 512 MB
• Sandisk Cruzer Micro 2 GB
• SuperTalent RBST 1 GB
• A-Data MyFlash PD7 1 GB
• A-Data Football Disk 512 MB
• Thermaltake MUSE external HDD enclosure
• Generic Stick USB 1.1 256 MB

Once the drive is plugged in, the entire blue center with the Verbatim logo lights up. It also serves as an access indicator for hard drive activity.

HDTach was used for the read average and access time benchmark. In this case, HDTune was used to verify the results.


We usually use HDTach for benchmarking Memory devices, but the results were quite low, so HDTune was used as well to double check the results. As you can see the performance dips just after 3 and 6 GB. This could be a sign that the head is reaching the outside of the platter which results in lower performance.


As you can see, the drive is really slow. A mere 6.9 MB/s average read speed is nothing to be proud of. Readying large amounts of data will take roughly 5 times as long as the fastest USB memory stick we have tested. Considering the high price tag of the Store'n'Go USB hard drive, this is rather disappointing.


Access times are no real hit either. At 32.4 ms the drive is slower than most USB enclosures, employing normal hard drives. There are a few USB memory devices which are slower, but with these access times the Store'n'Go USB hard drive cannot be used for Vista ReadyBoost.

To get a feeling how the speed with different sized files is, we used the ATTO disk benchmark.


The Store'n'Go device shines with the write scores, with much faster performance than most flash based USB memory sticks. This is due to the use of a hard drive. Optimum file size is a mere 16KB or bigger for maximum performance. This is much better than the solid state counterparts which usually can only deliver above 64KB file sizes.

Value & Conclusion