Flash Drive Speed

You recommended FAT32, but from what little that you said, it sounds as though exFAT would have more advantages.

Afer some Googling, I found that it appears that exFAT is on it's way as a cross platform FS:

exFAT for Embedded Systems Comes to Linux from Tuxera - Via an intellectual property agreement with Microsoft - Softpedia

But it is not clear to me if it is now available. From what I have read around Google returns, I get the impression that the FS was designed with flash drive use in mind. This makes me wonder if the Microsoft USB/DVD tool that I used to make the Windows 7 installation drive used exFAT or NTFS for structuring the drive? How would one examine a FS structure to determine it's format type? I'm trying to figure out if this might be the reason that it operates so slowly? Since flash drives are solid state, I would have thought that they would be faster than a DVD.

nate42nd said:

Also, you can get a good idea of the speed of 5 different drives and compare it to yours with this video I made. Maybe it will help you sort out how your drive is performing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYvKCNKrWcc

I didn't see your post, until after my last post. Your video is quite interesting and it inspired me to test my drives in the same fashion. As you can see in the screenshots below, my drives didn't fare as well as yours did. The Corsair drive is loaded with the Windows 7 installation, and the OCZ just has an archive of zips & exes.

I'm wondering if the irradic results of the Corsair indicates a defective drive or if it is due to how it is loaded and formatted? The access times on both drives are slower than your's but the Corsair is particularly bad.

I got to thinking about the fact that I had used the front panel USB port on my PC which I think is limited to USB 1.1, so I ran the test again with it plugged into my USB hub, which is connected to the Back I/O USB port, which is 2.0, thinking that would improve the results, but as you can see, it got worse. I then retested the OCZ to see if the problem might be due to a defective hub, but it came out very slightly improved:

Jonathan_King said:

It formats the drive with NTFS.

Thanks, that is good to know.

Based on the HD Tune tests, I've decided that the Corsair drive is not up to par, and have applied for an RMA. I noted in their FAQs that they say that they didn't include the electronics chip in the drive and that was the reason that it is not as fast as some drives in it's category, but if that is the reason for it to be so irradic, they need to put the chip back in.

They already beat me out of a $20 rebate that they promised, but never came, so they better replace the drive, or I shall not be buying any more Corsair products.