Testing - Continued

Here are the results of the Low-Level Read test, shown in X-Factor.  Remember that this result is commonly used on packaging to compare drives; but will mainly use the max rating found, and companies do not all use the same test to determine this rating.  Looking at this, the Rally2 takes first by a good margin.  The Pico and Xporter tied for second, but still crushed the others.  This read speed will help you access your files faster.

Here are the results of the Low-Level Read test, shown in MB per second.  This number allows you to figure out how long it would take on average to read or copy off a file of any size on this drive.  As you can see it is very closely correlated to the X-Factor.The Rally2 takes the lead, closely followed by the Pico, trailed by the ADATA, and completely lapping the Cruzer Micro.  I will point out that the this does not meet the 32-35 MB/s that OCZ claims on their website for this drive.  Again these first two results are for your read and access times, so the higher they are, the faster you can get to your files.

This is the file read test, which shows speeds for actual files being transfered.  I thought my new Pico read files fast, but the Rally2 beats it with ease on all the tests.  Where as the Cruzer stays at essentially the same speed across the files sizes, the Rally2 increases in speed as the file size increses.  Even the Xporter that jumps up after 1MB, still has a miniscule increase between 3MB and 5MB.  Again, higher read speeds let you access and copy files faster. 

As far as writing files, the Pico crushes the competition, with the Rally2 taking second, doubling the speeds of the Cruzer and the ADATA.  The Rally2 maintains stable performance, but still doesn't match up to the great speeds of the Pico.  At this point I have to say that 7.3 - 8.3 MB/s just barely meets the 8 - 15 MB/s advertised for this drive.  I would also take into account that most of the files transferred to a flash drive tend to be less than 3MB, so having good speeds at or below that level will have the greatest impact on the normal user.