 |
|
Super Talent DH Series 4GB USB Drive
Submitted by jwhitakr on Tue, 07/03/2007 - 23:05.
|
|
 |
With the release of Windows Vista and the ReadyBoost feature accompanying it, high-performance USB flash drives with gigabytes of storage are becoming increasingly popular. But even if you don’t use Vista for your operating system, USB flash drives are still incredibly handy for storing programs and files to transport from one PC to the next. Super Talent Technology has developed a new series of flash drives – the DH series of 200x flash drives – that are available in capacities ranging from 512MB up to 8GB. With an unformatted capacity of 4GB, this USB drive has a lot of flexibility in the types of files that it can store. You can carry an entire library of high resolution pictures, a few hundred MP3s or even a couple DiVX movies on this one small USB drive. Today I am taking a close look at the 4GB model (DHBS4GBBK) to see how it stacks up to the competition.
Design
The small, rectangular shaped Super Talent 4GB 200x drive is available in two colors – black and silver – and is made of an aluminum casing. The black, aluminum casing gives the drive a sturdy feel without adding much weight to the unit. The plastic cap comes off easily with a slight tug and, once removed, reveals the USB connector. The back of the drive features a clear, plastic loop. The plastic loop has dual uses – it lights up when the drive is powered on and when it is in use, and it can be used to attach the drive to a keychain or neck strap.
No other accessories or software are included with the USB drive. Super Talent does offer free downloadable software from their website called “Memory Bar”, which allows you to to set aside a section of the drive that is only accessible by using a security password.
Features and Specifications
- Dimension: 64.5 mm x 16.8 mm x 7.1 mm
- Full compatibility with USB 1.1 and 2.0
- Dual Channel Flash Memory Architecture
- Hot plug and play; Functions like another hard drive
- Supports password protection
- No driver needed for most operating systems (Windows 98SE driver available online)
- LED indicates power, busy
- More than 10 years data retention
- Limited lifetime warranty
 |
 |
 |
| Attached to USB dongle | Attached to PC directly | Activity light showing drive is in use |
Performance
To test the performance of the Super Talent 200x USB flash drive, I used the HD Tach 3.0.1.0 benchmark program as well as the HD Tune 2.52 program. The first set of tests were ran with a typical set of programs running in the background – Folding@Home, 2 browser windows, Macromedia Fireworks and a My Documents file browser window. The second set of tests were ran with no other applications running in the background. These two tests should give a clear view of the overall speed of the USB flash drive.
One other note - this USB flash drive has been verified to support the “ReadyBoost” feature on Windows Vista. While I won't be testing Vista here, this is certainly an attractive feature of the drive if you are using Vista as your operation system.
Testing was performed using the following system:
- Motherboard: ECS KN1 SLI Lite
- CPU: AMD Athlon X2 3800+ Dual-Core
- Memory: 2GB Corsair TWINX (2x1GB) DDR RAM
- CPU Heatsink: Spire VertiCool IV
- Video card: EVGA 7900GT with 93.71 driver version
- Hard drive: Western Digital 250GB SATA2 16MB cache
- Optical drive: NEC 8X DVD-R DVD burner
- Power supply: Ultra XVS 700W
- Case: Ultra Grid with clear side window
Up first is a snapshot of the drive stats from HD Tune. You will see that the drive comes pre-formatted with the FAT32 file system.
 |
Next you will see the results from the first set of tests with a number of programs running in the background:
 |
 |
Finally, the results of the second set of tests with no other programs running in the background:
 |
 |
As you can see from the results, the Super Talent drive excels in both read (33.2 MB/sec) and (27.8 MB/sec) write times. The transfer speeds have a lot more variance in the first set of tests, most likely due to the other demands being placed on the CPU and other sub-systems by the background programs. The average transfer speeds are not affected by the number of programs running in the background. Also, as you can see, the transfer speeds are no where near the speeds of typical hard disk drives, so you won't want to try to run any games or any file I/O intensive programs from a USB flash drive. But, overall, the results are outstanding.
Super Talent DH Series 4GB USB Drive
The Super Talent 4GB 200x is definitely a worthy choice for your next USB flash drive. With the dual channel memory architecture, it offers impressive read and write speeds in a very small and sturdy package. The access times do not compete with hard disk drives, but they are acceptable for a USB flash drive and are on par with the competition. With ReadyBoost support, it can also provide a small bump in performance for systems that don’t have a lot of RAM installed (especially laptops).
Pros: Very fast read/write speeds, lightweight and sturdy, ReadyBoost support, lifetime warranty.
Cons: No software included – must be downloaded from the web.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
 |
