USB Flash write speed (for use w/USB Divx player)

[Roman4604]

Got tired of the shlep of burning Divx/Xvid files onto DVD+RW disks for use in my LG DVX173 player. Also over time the disks get scratched and the LG's drive seems more prone to read errors resulting in no audio or speech lag every now and then.

So decided to invest in USB based solution comprising of Philips 5986K player (R599 HiFi Corp) & Kingston DataTraveler 4GB USB flash drive (R272 pcint.co.za).

In general the setup works great, however I have 2 gripes;

1. Philips does not has a jump to time in Divx function like the LG had, but at least the quickest FF runs at ~1min per sec so it doesnt take too long to resume watching at the end of a file.

2. A bigger niggle is the slowness of write speeds on the the Kingston. I'm getting 4-6MBps, which is little better than the 4x speed (on +RW disks) of my DVD writer . Tried on different machines (setting USB 1.1 or 2.0) and it makes no difference so it must be the flash itself.

My Q is anyone know where to get resonably priced 2 or 4 GB flash drives with (much) higher write speeds?

 

[Skeptik]

My Q is anyone know where to get resonably priced 2 or 4 GB flash drives with (much) higher write speeds?

Expect to pay around R1000 for a locally available 4Gb Sandisk U3 flash disk with fast reads and writes. One I've seen is called Ducati - pretty fast, odd shape..

Bear in mind that U3 will change next year.

 

[Keith]

I'm also in he process of purchasing a new 4GB usb flash drive and the big problem is that most out there are pretty slow i.e. 11mb/s and below, and the fast ones are very expensive.

Corsair is the top of my list at the moment.
Their standard 4GB Voyager (with read speeds of 19mb/s and writes of 13mb/s) goes for R317 @ Sybaritic or Zaps and R280 at the dealers (if you have a connection).
Their high speed 4GB Voyager GT (with read speeds of 34mb/s and writes of 28mb/s) goes for R752 @ Sybaritic or Zaps and R682 at the dealers.

Hope this helps...

 

[Roman4604]

Hi Keith,

Just a clarification ... the speeds you are quoting, are they in MBytes/sec ? e.g. my Kingston writes at up to 6 MBytes/sec = 48 Mbits/sec.

 

[Keith]

Hi Keith,

Just a clarification ... the speeds you are quoting, are they in MBytes/sec ? e.g. my Kingston writes at up to 6 MBytes/sec = 48 Mbits/sec.

I'm afraid that someone is not correct here...
In my defense, you can read many a review of the Corsair Voyager usb thumb drives and most of them quote the speed in MB/s...

I've attached a link to TechGage where they review it and I've also attached a picture of the benchmark.

http://techgage.com/article/corsair_voyager_4gb_thumb_drive/2

http://mybroadband.co.za/photos/showphoto.php?photo=1892

My dealer price list also lists the Kingston and Coraisr under the same mb/s (which I belive should be MB/s) and yes, the Kingston is 6 while the Corsair is 19

 

[Skeptik]

My 8GB Sandisk Cruiser Contour quotes the following speeds.
18MB/s WRITE
25MB/s READ

It isn't available here, but the Ducati is with similar speeds. And it's guaranteed for life! (& Readyboost, U3, anti-virus etc ..)

 

[Syndyre]

I use an external hard drive instead of a flash drive, not sure what the write speed is but it helps that you can copy on a lot more than 4GB at a time...

 

[Roman4604]

Doing a bit of research and it seems the Super Talent 200X (cheesy name) have the best price/perf. Reviews on the net show these things write at 20-23MBps.

Sybaritic have the 2GB at R414 & 4GB at R690, may check them out next week ... thanks for all the input.