Performance Tests

Testing Methodology

Testing flash drives is not as simple as putting together a bunch of files, dragging them into the flash drive folder in Windows and using a stopwatch to time how long the transfer takes. Rather, there are factors such as read / write speed and data burst speed to take into account.

For these tests I used a combination of the ATTI Disk Benchmark, HDTach and the SIS Sandra Removable Storage benchmark. I plugged the ATV into the same USB 2.0 port directly on the back plate of a ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard.


Read Bandwidth

For this benchmark, HDTach was used. It shows the potential read speed that you are likely to experience with this drive.



As you can see the ATV holds its own against some of the fastest (and not so fast) drives on the market. While it is not as fast as the ATV Turbo line, it is very close.


Random Access Time

Once again, HDTach was used for the benchmark. This benchmark tests how quickly different areas of the drive’s memory can be accessed. A low number means that the drive space can be accessed quickly while a high number means that more time is taken trying to access different parts of the drive.



Surprisingly the ATV was actually faster than the Turbo line, but this may be due to the fact that the ATV Turbo that was tested was a 4GB model.


ATTO Disk Benchmark

The Atto disk benchmark tests the drives’ read and write speeds using gradually larger size files. For these tests, the ATTO program was kept at its default values and each test was run 4 times. The test program then spits out an extrapolated performance figure in megabytes per second.



As you can see, the ATV is very fast in reading but only above average when it comes to write speeds. While these write speeds are not as good as advertised they are still much better than most other consumer level drives. What is very disappointing is that the ATV was not even able to equal the performance of the older OCZ Rally 2GB flash drive.


Sandra Removable Storage Benchmark

This test was run with the removable storage benchmark in Sandra IX Standard. All of the scores are calculated in operations per second and have been averaged out from the scores of 4 test runs.



This is where the drives limitation really begin to show. As far as SiSoftware Sandra scores are concerned the ATV performs very similarly to the older OCZ Rally 2. These number are still very good but both Corsair GT and OCZ ATV Turbo are in a league all their own. The performance difference between the standard and Turbo versions of the ATV really becomes apparent in this test.