OCZ Rally2 Flash Drive Review Posted
| Author: |
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| Jeff Haluska | |
| Published: | |
| 10/8/06
Product: |
|
| Manufacturers: | |
| OCZ | |
| Introduction |
| Sneaker nets today primarily consist of USB thumb drives.
I like to think of them as the rightful successors of the floppy drive.
Faster, more reliable, scalable, and smaller, these devices use small memory
chips that retain their information even when power is removed. But
with flash technology improving every year, flash drives are now even better
than rewritable CD ROMs for transferring data from computer to computer. So when my latest generic flash drive literally started falling apart, I decided to try out OCZ's Rally2 series. OCZ achieves speeds rivaling hard drives from 5 years ago should be more than adequate for the majority of applications today. With sub millisecond random access time, today's flash can actually be faster for some applications than a hard drive. For a flash device, the Rally2 is speed demon. OCZ achieves extraordinary high read and write speeds by basically making a flash RAID. Incorporated in their slick chassis are actually dual flash chips working in parallel to stream you the data fast. |
| What You Get |
| The Rally2 has the standard "anti theft" packaging that
makes you curse thieves everywhere. Fortunately I had some aluminum
tin snips that made quick work of the packaging. Inside I found to my
surprise a 3 foot long USB extension cable, a Win98 Driver and user manual
CD, lantern and the Rally2. Personally I don't care much for the lantern as I carry mine around in my pocket, but it is built for either preference. The three foot extension cord is a nice touch and can come in handy, but it really needs to be six foot long. Three feet sounds like a long distance, but if your system is on the floor you may have problems putting the cable where you want it. |
| The Thumbdrive |
| The thumb drive is enclosed in a nice sturdy feeling black aluminum enclosure, which feels extremely solid and well built. It fits nicely in the palm of the hand. It is heavy enough to know its there, but light enough to not weigh down your pocket. The drive is thin enough so that it won't block an adjacent port when plugged in. The cap does not snap on, but glides on and off almost the perfect amount of tension on the USB connector. You can pick up the thumb drive by the cap and not have it fall apart, which is a nice feature since the drive is symmetrical. The only downside to the cap is there is nowhere to put it once you take it off, so unless you are careful with caps will be easy to lose. |
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| Test Setup | |
| Mother Board | DFI LANPARTY UT nF4 Ultra-D |
| CPU | AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (Venice) 939 |
| Power Supply | SinTek 600SLI |
| Optical Drive | Lite On DVDRW SHW-160P6S, DVSKOREA DVD-ROM DSR1600H |
| Hard Drive | Hitachi 7200 RPM 250 GB PATA |
| Video Cards | Gigabyte GV-NX66T128D 6600GT PCI-E 128MB |
| OS | Windows XP |
| Test Philosophy |
| I just decided to try testing with HD Tach v3.0.1.0 and some stop watched data transfer tests. |
| HD Tach |
| HD Tach returned a 25.0 MB/s transfer rate and a 61.0ms random access time. The comparison chart just shows the maximum speeds supported by each protocol. |
| I transferred a 1,716,348 KB (1.7GB) DVD ISO file to the drive and timed the reading and writing with my watch. Which turns into a 9 megabyte write speed and a 21 megabyte read speed. When writing or reading from the device the drive's orange LED blinks. |
| Write | 185 seconds |
| Read | 79 seconds |
| Conclusion |
|
When replacing my USB thumb drive, I wanted a thumb drive which was smaller, had a higher capacity, faster, and more durable. OCZ's Rally2 met all my requirements and in my opinion is one of the most stylish flash drives around. If you're looking for quick upgrade to your sneaker net, a gift for a geek, or just need want an easy way to back up your data, you'd be hard pressed to find a better drive then the Rally2. You can find the 1GB version for $25, the 2GB for $43 and the 4GB for $84. |
