SuperTalent 4GB USB Flash Drive - small, fast and reliable storage
Written: Jul 17 '07
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Very fast read/write speeds, ReadyBoost support, lifetime warranty
Cons: No included software or accessories
The Bottom Line: The Super Talent DH Series 4GB drive is definitely a worthy contender for anyone looking to buy a new high speed USB flash drive.
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| jwhitakr's Full Review: SuperTalent (USBALUMI4GBDHS) Flash Drive |
Background
USB flash drives are becoming more and more common, and the price per gigabyte of storage is also falling quickly. With the price of a decent sized USB drive falling to less than $40, I decided it was time to go ahead and get one. I have an older 128MB USB drive that works for transporting small files, but it has become very cumbersome to have to limit the number of files store on the drive and the types of files stored on the drive. The small 128MB size makes storing any pictures or music files almost impossible. I was looking for either a 2GB or a 4GB size USB flash drive to use for carrying lots of pictures and music files around with me. The Super Talent 4GB DH Series USB Flash drive fit the bill for an affordable USB drive that also offered increased performance over other USB drives.
Look and Feel
The rectangular shaped Super Talent 4GB 200x drive is available in two colors – black and silver. The body is made of a shiny aluminum casing that wraps around the entire drive. The aluminum casing gives the drive a solid, rigid feel without adding much weight to it. I would estimate that it only weighs a couple of ounces at the most. The front of the drive has a plastic cap that 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 two uses – it lights up when the drive is powered on and when it is in use, and it also can be used to attach the drive to a keychain or neck strap.
Software and accessories
No other accessories or software are included with the USB drive. Super Talent does offer free downloadable software from their website called “Memory Bar” – but I have not downloaded the software. According to their site, it allows you to set aside a section of the drive that is only accessible by using a security password.
Testing and General Usage
To get the Super Talent drive up and running was incredibly easy. After opening the package, you simply plug the drive into any USB port and the computer recognizes it as a USB drive. There are no drivers or any other software that is required in order to make full use of the drive. The loop on the back of the drive lights up to indicate that the drive is in use, and it is ready to be used. The drive comes pre-formatted with FAT32 file system.
In my 6 weeks of use, the drive has been 100% reliable and has not had any problems either reading or writing data. The fact that it does not have any sort of ‘write-protect’ switch or anything similar to keep from accidentally overwriting data has not been a problem for me. I actually prefer not having any sort of switch on the outside of the drive as I have found with past products that is more of a hassle than a real security feature.
Aside from the amount of storage, the speed of a USB drive for reading and writing files is the most important feature to me. To test the speed of the Super Talent DH Series USB flash drive, I used the HD Tach benchmark program as well as a set of manual tests to time the time taken to transfer files. These tests will give a clear view of the overall speed of the USB flash drive.
One additional note - this USB flash drive has been verified to support the “ReadyBoost” feature on Windows Vista. I don’t have Vista and thus am not able to test this feature. This would be an attractive feature of the drive if you are using Vista as your operating 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
HD Tach 3.0.1.0 – Burst speed: 35MB/sec
HD Tach 3.0.1.0 – Avg. speed: 33.2MB/sec
Writing many small files totaling about 600MB to the USB drive: 55 seconds
Reading many small files totaling about 600MB from the USB drive: 26 seconds
Specifications and Features
- Dimensions: 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
Conclusion
The Super Talent DH Series 4GB drive is definitely a worthy contender for anyone looking to buy a new high speed USB flash drive. The dual channel memory architecture allows it to attain impressive read and write speeds, and it comes in a very small and sturdy package. With ReadyBoost support, it can also provide a small bump in performance for Vista based computers that don’t have a lot of RAM installed. This would be an especially handy feature for laptops with 1GB or less of RAM.
Recommended:
Yes
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jwhitakr
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Member: Justin Whitaker
Location: Lenexa, KS, USA
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