Kingston DataTraveler 150 32GB USB drive review
32GB? or 30GB?
One thing I noticed while I was testing this drive is that Kingston uses the same trick as hard drive makers to determine the capacity of its USB drives. For the storage manufacturers, one kilobyte is 1000 bytes, while for your computer one kilobyte is 1024 bytes. It's a small difference but when you have flash drives as large as 32GB there's about 2GB "missing". You can't really blame Kingston for this as every storage maker does this but it's one of the things you need to keep in mind when you're buying one of these drives so you're sure it will be big enough for whatever you'll use it for.
Performance
Kingston didn't list any performance details in their specifications so I wasn't sure what to expect from this drive but it turned out to be a good performer.
Test system:
- Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 processor with OCZ Vendetta HSF
- Asus Commando motherboard
- ASUS EN7300GS/HTD 256MB
- OCZ Reaper HPC PC2-9200 2x 1GB memory
- Seagate 320GB HDD
- CoolerMaster Cosmos case
- PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 PSU
- Dell 2407WFP LCD display
- Operating system: Windows XP SP2
I use two tests to benchmark the performance of flash drives, the first one is HD Tach. This application tests the average and burst read speed of various sections of the drive. The results are very good, the DataTraveler 150 has an average read speed of 32.7MB/s, with peaks of 35MB/s and a random access time of 0.8ms.
ATTO Disk Benchmark
I also test drives with ATTO - this program was configured to transfer 8MB of data to the drive in blocks from 1KB to 1MB. This gives you a look at fast (or slow) the drive is when you're transferring a batch of small files. One of the things I noticed is the drive is pretty slow when you're transferring files smaller than 32KB - that's probably the reason why this drive doesn't have Windows Vista ReadyBoost support. Once the file sizes get bigger than 32KB the DataTraveler 150 is pretty fast, with average write speeds of almost 21MB/s and read speeds of 27MB/s.
Conclusion
The Kingston DataTraveler 150 offers plenty of storage capacity, it's fast and not too expensive. Kingston says the DataTraveler 150 has a MSRP of 81EUR (excl. VAT) in Europe and $139 in the US but you can find it for a lot less. Places like Newegg sell this 32GB USB stick for only $79.99.
The Good Stuff
The Bad Stuff
I give the Kingston DataTraveler 150 32GB USB drive a 9/10 and our Seal of Approval.
Previous Page (1/2)Added: October 19th 2008
Product reviewed: Kingston DataTraveler 150 32GB USB drive
Reviewer: Thomas De Maesschalck
Score: 9/10
Page: 2/2
