OCZ ATV 4GB USB Flash Drive Review

In America we know that excess is never enough.  The technology industry provides us with portable solid-state disks that can hold every Atari 2600 cartridge ever created, and that still isn’t enough.  We take these little gadgets with us everywhere, and I should know as I’ve destroyed more USB drives than the company’s Quality Control department.

I expect alot out of my USB drives nowadays, and there certainly are a lot to choose from.  Not only do I need to keep certain data with me at all times, but I need to make sure that it can survive my active lifestyle of mountain climbing and river rafting (anyone who’s ever seen my picture knows that I’m kidding).  Seriously, though, one of the reasons I’ve lost so much data to nature is that the drives just weren’t rugged enough and couldn’t even last a good wash cycle.  Either they come in fragile plastic shells, or have tiny pieces that break off or become lost.

OCZ is here to save the day with their ATV line of Flash drives.  Not only is it completely waterproof, but its squishy rubber coating makes it so impact-resistant that it actually bounces.  On top of all that, this drive comes in large 4GB and 8GB capacities and utilizes dual-channel technology.

Description
The shock-proof ATV features mainstream speeds offering consumers an affordable option and was designed to safely accommodate a wealth of important data and media files. Not only are these premium flash drives aggressively fast at transferring files of all types and sizes, but are optimized for Windows® Vista™ Ready Boost, offering true performance advantages to this latest operating system.

ATV flash drives feature durable and colorful rubber tread housing, which is a 100% weatherproof storage solution to keep digital files safe in any conditions, even fully submerged in water. The attached cap holder will help prevent misplacement of the protective key cover, while the chain can easily fasten to your key ring for ultimate portability.

Specifications

• High Speed USB 2.0 Certified
• Read: 30-34MB / second
• Write 14-15MB / second
• True Plug and Plat (Compatible with Mac OS X)
• Dual Channel Technology
• Available in 2GB, 4GB, and 8GB Capacities
• Waterproof Rubber Housing
• Orange LED Status Light
• Lifetime Warranty

The OCZ ATV drive is of average size for today’s portable devices.  There are some drives that are extremely portable and tiny, and others that feel like a brick, complete with lanyard to hang yourself with.

OCZ’s focus for this drive is dependability and portability.  It is meant to affix to a keychain, as no lanyard is included, but does come with a small chain. This chain also tethers a unique cap-plug to the main unit.  This plug is molded out of the same rubber that engulfs the drive, and snugly holds the rubber cap in place.

I’ve lost more USB drive caps than I have destroyed them, and this is usually due to an inadequate method of securing the caps when the drive is in use. The cap is so snug, that trying to remove the cap will undoubtedly pry the chain apart.  It didn’t take me even an hour before I had noticed that the cap was missing yet again… but I’m apparently accident prone, so take this with a grain of salt.

The drive is meant to look tough, too, as the blue rubber mimics the tire treads of an ATV (All-Terrain Vehicle).  The blue rubber pieces are embossed slightly, which makes the unit satisfying to grip.  The rubber is also slightly tacky, so a dip in your jeans pocket means it will come out looking like a dust bunny.

On the rear end of the drive is a clear plastic button with the markings “4G”, either indicating this is the amoung of force it can take, or that this is the 4-gigabyte flavor of the ATV line.  Underneath this plastic window is an orange LED which identifies when the unit is plugged in, in addition to read or write activity.

Performance testing was done on a Dell laptop with USB 2.0 running Windows XP SP2 with an Intel 2.5Ghz mobile processor and 1GB of RAM.  Read tests were measured with SimliSoft’s HDTach, while real-world write speeds were tested by copying a 800MB contiguous file to the drive and measuring the time to calculate the average write.

The ATV surpasses my previous favorite, the A-Data Nobility PD17 2GB flash drive.  It’s top burst speed is just slightly lower than A-data’s offering,  but average read is slightly higher; so is close enough to safely say that they have the same read speed.

The OCZ takes a slight lead when it comes to write performance, as it lays down nearly 7MB a second on its rubberized bits. I was surprised that this drive didn’t have better write performance given that this stick uses dual-channel technology.  We didn’t achieve anywhere near OCZ’s advertised 14MB / second write speed, but it still performs better than any other consumer-level drive.

While the Corsair Padlock is a good performing drive, it is only average in comparison to the other’s read speeds.  Realistically there is only a 5 to 10 second difference between the slowest and the fastest drive when copying 500 megabytes of data.  If you constantly fill up and relieve your drive to its capacity on a frequent basis then these few seconds could translate into minutes.

The OCZ ATV USB drive keeps up with and even surpasses other quality USB drives in both read and write speeds.

While the unit is ruggedized and can stand up to the “extreme lifestyle” of today’s nerds, but there are a few issues with its design.  For one, the slightly sticky rubber coating will get a healthy layer of pocket lint all over it.  The cap plug is a neat idea, but the weak chain doesn’t permanently resolve the cap-losing problem.  The unit is slightly larger than I’d like for a keychain accessory, but isn’t as large as some of the USB bricks out there.

The unit is also competitively priced and can be found online for around $50.  The OCZ ATV drive appears to be at the top end of the “consumer-range” flash drives, which is still good enough to run portable applications and stream video, in addition to your other portable data storage needs.  This drive has an excellent value-to-performance ratio, making it a bargain compared to the more expensive “enthusiast-class” USB drives.

	REPORT CARD : OCZ ATV 4GB USB Flash Drive category rating comments Quality 5 The unit is almost indestructible, and is one of the fastest consumer USB drives. Innovation 4 Ruggedized design is good.  They did what they could with the cap. Performance 4 Edges out other quality USB drives slightly, but I expected more from a dual-channel drive. Aesthetics 5 The rubber coating looks as tough as you do. Value 5 A bulletproof 4GB flash drive for $50?  Lifetime warranty? Wow. FINAL VERDICT: 5 out of 5 stars