TEST BED

TESTING METHODOLOGY

   Since flash drives are basically plain storage media devices just like solid state drives and hard disk drives, we are using almost the same testing methodology to successfully record the achieved performance numbers. The benchmark suites used are HD Tach RW (Read Speeds / Long Bench 32mb Zone Testing), HD Tune Pro (Read speeds), Sisoftware Sandra Pro (Read / Write speeds - some drives can't be tested for write performance), AIDA 64 Engineer Edition (Average Linear Read / Random Read speeds), Crystal Disk Mark x64 (100MB-1000MB Read / Write speeds) and finally ATTO (Max Read / Max Write speeds). Every test is repeated a total of 6 times after which the average performance numbers are recorded into our charts (0 = we were unable to complete that test).

    All tests are performed on Microsoft Windows 10 Pro installation with all updates installed up to the date of this review. As always for comparison purposes in the charts you will also find many other flash drivers which have been tested using the same exact test bench as the one in this review (we really can't keep every flash drive we get forever and also even if we could test them all again and again would simply not be possible).

* As of November 2020, secure USB flash drives have their own charts (also added write performance levels) for a more "direct" and "easy" comparison between similar models.
** As of June 2024 the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X / ASRock X670E Taichi test rig will be used for testing encrypted drives (in case faster encrypted drives do make their appearance sooner rather than later).