Conclusion
Admittedly, this comparison is not relevant to everyday life, but it is still interesting as a thought experiment, as the outcome was all but predictable. Forgive us for comparing an ultra-portable, compact USB storage device with a 10-year old ATA/33 desktop hard drive, but when we took stock of our hardware, we found ourselves looking at these two physically and architecturally different pieces of storage technology that still had important details in common. The IBM DTTA-351010 10 GB hard drive and the Super Talent Pico C 8 GB USB flash drive offer similar capacities and similar interface throughput. And we found the size and weight difference simply amazing.
On the one hand, it was obvious that any decent flash-based storage device can deliver far better transfer rates than a 10-year old hard drive: 12.4 MB/s maximum transfer rates are awful, and the Pico C flash drive clearly earns a victory here.
However, we found it shocking to see the difference in I/O performance. Super Talent’s flash drive would perform amazingly well as long as write operations were left out of the equation. But as soon as write operations were involved, the old hard drive would still beat the modern flash drive by a considerable margin.
Our results make clear that products such as the Super Talent Pico C 8 GB USB thumb drives should be used as storage devices for occasional use, and preferably for large files such as photo, audio or video files. They are by no means capable of replacing hard drive when I/O intensive workload is requested, because performance in this task will be disappointing. Should you be looking for a low-capacity drive for a low-power PC, we recommend looking around for other solutions that deliver better performance.
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Future ideas.
Compare ~$120 budget upgrade of old 10GB ATA33 HDD with:
a) current PATA drive (also test with short stroked to 32GB);
b) current SATA drive + card .. (similar performance as PATA. cost dif?);
c) best capacity MLC USB FLASH within budget;
d) best speed 16GB USB FLASH within budget;
e) like above but with CF card and adapter (IDE or SATA).
How long did it take you to conclude that "Super Talent Pico C 8 GB USB thumb drives should be used as storage devices for occasional use". You are truly pioneers for discovering this.
/sarcasm
what a waste of time..
interesting..... my write function to my brain has been severely compromised by reading this
Guys - why slag off something that actually shows how far the static stroage devices have come? The fact that the USB pen is better was not really in question, it was an exercise in finding out how much better and 'if' there were areas that it fell short on taht it shouldn't...lighten up folks!
Doubling every year results in EXPONENTIAL growth not LINEAR.
Why to rant at an article that doesn't promise illumination, just what it says on title
Whining championship anywhere?
This test is plain STUPID !!! should i go on reading xbitlabs ???
WTF was this people ??? Even a 4 year old can state that a new stick can "defeat" the 1k year old hard drive.
Please test something much more interesting next time.
doubling every year results in GEOMETRIC growth, not linear and NOT exponential!
A little stupid, the persistant whining that is.
It was an interesting article, I suppose this can be taken as 'proof' rather than just 'taken' that pen drives are not for extensive use.
What about data warranty? I would prefer stocking my pictures on an old hard drive rather than on a USB device, Just like CD-DVD they loose data over time.
I too was largely aware of the conclusions, but was interested to read on the specifics, and where we stood now. My thanks to you Patrick/Achim. I don't understand the whining (some people have time to whine, but not enough to write their own interesting articles. nuff said...)