Verbatim was kind enough to send over one of their 256MB Store ‘n’ Go USB 2.0 drives for me to review. I recently did a review on a USB 2.0 Pen Drive which was really good, much better than USB 1.1 that’s for sure. USB drives are such a great thing to have because they are fast, simple to install, you can take them anywhere, and they can hold a good amount of data. Verbatim claims to have the fastest USB drive on the market right now which we will put to the test later in this review. There really isn’t much to say more about this drive before getting into the review so lets just do so.
Specifications
- External dimensions(LxWxH): 8.132 x 1.75 x 10.75
- Transfer rate: read: 8000KByte/s, write: 5000KByte/s
- Compatible OS: Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows CE 3.0, Windows Me, Windows 98 (must use included drivers), Mac 8.6 and higher, Linux kernel 2.4.0 and higher.
- Capacity: 256MB
- Data Retention: 10 years
This Verbatim Store ‘n’ Go comes in a retail package which is why it is heavily encased by a lot of plastic. From the front of the package you can see that drive and from the back of the package you can see the extras that you get. On a side note this package was pretty hard to open even with some serious scissors.
This Store ‘n’ Go comes with a mini CD which contains drivers as well as a utility to manage the drive. You also get a neck strap, USB extension cord, and quick guide which isn’t really necessary because installation is simple.
The drive is the smallest one I have encountered so far and I think it may be the smallest on the market right now. The cap for the drive is nice because it comes off easily but only when you want it to. I don’t think it is too lose to the point where it would come off when you didn’t want it to. I plugged the drive into my Belkin Hi-Speed USB 2.0 Drive Bay Hub and its ready to go. You can also see an OCmodshop case badge in the picture which you can pick up from our online store for only $3.
Installation simple like most USB devices, just plug it in and your good to go. Both Windows 2000 and Windows XP recognized the drive with no drivers needed and were ready to go in about 5 seconds. In the device manager the drive shows up as “USB Disk 2.0 USB Device” and is under the disk drives category. To unplug the device it is best to stop it before you unplug it just to be sure that nothing is using it so you don’t lose any information you might need. Along with being really fast the drive is really small so you can take it with you anywhere.
Test Bed
- Albatron K8X800 Pro II (review to come)
- AMD Athlon64 3200+ (review to come)
- 60GB Seagate Barracuda IV HDD
- 1024MB PC3200 Corsair TwinX
- XFX GeForceFX 5700 Ultra
- Koolcase’s Panther
- Plextor 40x12x40 CDRW
- SilenX 400w PSU
- Zalman CNPS7000A-Cu
- Netgear WG311 wireless NIC
Drives tested
- 256MB USB Verbatim USB drive
- 256MB USB 2.0 Pen Drive
- 128MB USB 1.1 Ur-Disk
SiSoft Sandra 2004 professional has a new benchmarking module for removable storage/flash benchmarking. You can use this benchmark to test USB flash disks which is a nice feature. The benchmark will test the drives read, write, and delete performance using a 512B, 32kb, 256kb, and 2MB files. This USB 1.1 Ur-Disk is pretty slow as you can see, all of the scores are on the low side and far below all of the other drives that SiSoft Sandra used as comparison.
Combined Device Index USB 1.1
Combined index:289 operations/min
512B Files Test
Read Performance:9753 operations/min
81 kb/secWrite Performance:157 operations/min1340 kb/secDelete Performance:200 operations/min Combined Index:405 operations/min 32kB Files TestRead Performance:1255 operations/min669 kb/secWrite Performance:125 operations/min67 kb/secDelete Performance:231 operations/min Combined Index:301 operations/min 256kB Files TestRead Performance:170 operations/min725 kb/secWrite Performance:33 operations/min141 kb/secDelete Performance:206 operations/min Combined Index:76 operations/min 2MB Files TestRead Performance:21 operations/min717 kb/secWrite Performance:6 operations/min205 kb/secDelete Performance:111 operations/min Combined Index:12 operations/min
Obviously the results from this USB 2.0 disk are much better than that of the older USB 1.1 device. This Verbatim drive is also much faster than the USB 2.0 Pen Drive that I reviewed recently. This drive is by far the fastest USB drive that I have used and I am very impressed with it.
| Combined Device Index USB 2.0 | ||
| Combined index: | 1039 operations/min | |
| 512B Files Test | ||
| Read Performance: | 28394 operations/min | 237 kb/sec |
| Write Performance: | 495 operations/min | 4 kb/sec |
| Delete Performance: | 758 operations/min | |
| Combined Index: | 1371 operations/min | |
| 32kB Files Test | ||
| Read Performance: | 9910 operations/min | 5285 kb/sec |
| Write Performance: | 469 operations/min | 250 kb/sec |
| Delete Performance: | 752 operations/min | |
| Combined Index: | 1201 operations/min | |
| 256kB Files Test | ||
| Read Performance: | 1724 operations/min | 7356 kb/sec |
| Write Performance: | 138 operations/min | 589 kb/sec |
| Delete Performance: | 704 operations/min | |
| Combined Index: | 375 operations/min | |
| 2MB Files Test | ||
| Read Performance: | 228 operations/min | 7782 kb/sec |
| Write Performance: | 34 operations/min | 1161 kb/sec |
| Delete Performance: | 489 operations/min | |
| Combined Index: | 86 operations/min | |
I made a graph to show the difference in the drive index speed which is basically the overall speed of the drive. This Verbatim drive is really fast it even leaves the USB 2.0 Pen Drive in the dust. Verbatim’s claim to having the fastest USB drive seems to hold true as far as I am concerned. With both the read and write tests it is much faster than anything else I have seen which is impressive.
Conclusion
After finishing the review on my previous USB 2.0 drive I didn’t think that the speeds would be much different between devices. I was clearly wrong because this Verbatim drive is much faster than any other USB drive that I have ever used. Not only is it extremely fast but it stores 256MB of data, and is very small. Along with being fast, small, and having a large capacity size it works with just about every operating system that you would be using.
Overall I am going to give this product a 10/10 and award it the OCmodshop Seal Of Approval because it’s an great product. I would like to thank Verbatim for sending this over to review.
Pros
- Very fast USB 2.0 speeds
- 256MB storage capacity
- Very small
- Comes with a USB extension cord and strap
- Cross platform compatible
- No external power needed
- Verbatim Lifetime Warranty
Cons
- None