USB flash drives are almost standard issue amongst IT professionals, and are useful for students and pretty much anyone who uses more than one computer. The capacities of today’s flash drives allow us to carry many gigabytes of personal data, so the write performance must also increase to fill the drive in a timely manner. It was only two years ago when a good flash drive could read at a rate of 10 Megabytes per second, and today’s Memory Monsters are expected to reach 25MB a second or more!
Due to the nature of flash memory, it cannot be written to in the same way as volotile memory (like your computer’s DDR2 RAM), so a clever way to increase throughput is to make it dual-channel (as most motherboards have implemented to increase performance).
OCZ addresses the performance shortcomings of other USB flash drives with their Rally2 Turbo USB drive, which features dual-channel technology coupled with faster non-volitile memory, which should theoretically enable faster read and write throughput.
The Rally2 Turbo takes data transfer to incredible new heights and leaves the competitors in the dust thanks to the ultra-fast dual channel technology.
Store and transfer large music, pictures, videos, and data files to your laptop or desktop in record time or simply “Plug and Play” them instantaneously from the convenience of any USB port. The Rally2 Turbo Drive excels when managing a wide range of media, and is optimized to more rapidly transfer today’s larger files.
The ultra durable OCZ Rally2 Turbo stores vital documents, presentations, images, music and more in an ultra sleek pocket-size drive, so you can access your files without having to disconnect other USB ports to make room, a common problem with many oversized competitor drives.
Change to the fast lane, and take the incredible OCZ Rally2 Turbo Flash drive for a test drive. Designed to be the fastest most reliable USB flash memory drive on the market, it comes backed with a limited lifetime warranty for the ultimate peace of mind.
Specifications
- High Speed USB 2.0 Certified
- True Plug and Play (Compatible with MAC OS X)
- Dual Channel Technology
- Available in 4GB and 8GB capacities
- Dimensions: 2 5/8″(L) x 5/8″ (W)
- Aluminum Chassis
- Orange LED Status Light
- Lifetime Warranty
- Up to 35MB/s (read), 30MB/s (write)
- Includes lanyard and USB extension cable
The Rally2 Turbo comes in a standard retail claimshell package, which is pried apart easily enough. Sandwiched between the plastic layers is a card with the device description and other marketing fluff. At the bottom of the package is the actual hardware and accessories: the Rally2 Turbo drive itself, a standard grey fabric lanyard, and a short USB extension cable.
The drive’s casing is made of aluminum, so the drive actually feels cold at first touch. Imprinted on the top of the drive is the Rally2 Turbo logo, and the backside has OCZ’s logo. The top of the drive has an aluminum cap which hides and protects the USB connector, and the bottom of the drive has a notch of clear plastic which holds the orange status LED. It is hard to see, but this translucent notch also has a tiny hole where you can slip the tip of the included lanyard.
Unfortunately, the backside is not contoured to accomodate the cap, so the cap will be loose when the drive is in use. Verbatim’s “Store n Go” (reviewed here) also used a lanyard on its bottom, but still allowed the cap to be placed there.
When first plugged in, the status LED turns on, signaling that the device is getting power. The orange light is actually very bright, much brighter than OCZ’s ATV drive. As is standard with other USB drives, this light blinks whenever a read or write operation is performed, which is helpful to know when the device can be salfely removed.
I have found that many USB drive’s performance can be increased by changing the USB hub’s mode to “optimal performance”, which basically enables write caching to the drive. When this is enabled, data may be written in the background, so you need to see if the activity light is blinking before you actually remove the drive. Windows recommends that you actually unmount the drive (by right-clicking the “safely remove hardware” icon in your taskbar) before removing when Optimal Performance is enabled.
The device is actually rather thin, barely over the width and height of the USB connector. The drive’s length is about the same length as many other USB drives, and easily fits in your pocket.
The features are all well and good, but what really determines a USB drive’s usefulness is its read and write performance. USB drives have come a long way over a relatively short period of time. It was only two years ago when a good flash drive could read at a rate of 10 Megabytes per second, and today’s flash drives are expected to reach 25MB or more.
Due to the nature of flash memory, it cannot be written to in the same way as volotile memory (like your computer’s DDR2 RAM), so a clever way to increase throughput is to make it dual-channel (as most motherboards have implemented to increase performance).
Write performance becomes increasingly important as flash drives increase their capacity. If write performance didn’t increase beyond 6MB a second, then it would take between 45 minutes to an hour to fill up a 16GB flash drive. More and more people are using their drives for “portable applications” such as portable FireFox (and even portable Photoshop), so write performance is especially crucial for this use.
To test the OCZ Rally2 Turbo, we used Sandra 2007, HDTach, ATTO 2.02, and HD Bench 3.30 to test the drive’s read and write performance. We also enabled “Optimal Performance” in Windows Vista, and verified that the USB hub was running in high-speed mode. We tested the USB drives on several test systems, and received different results on different platforms. We contacted OCZ’s support about this issue, and they confirmed that USB drive speed is greatly dependant on the motherboard’s Southbridge chip, and that nVidia’s 680i chipset is currently the fastest platform for USB drive throughput.
We tested on Windows Vista (both 64-bit and 32-bit) as well as Windows XP SP2 on several different Intel and nVidia platforms, including Intel’s 975 chipset, Intel 965, nVidia 680i, VIA chipsets.
OCZ Rally2 Turbo Performance Anlysis
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The peculiar thing about these benchmark results is that the read speed maxed out on the Intel 975 chipset on Vista 64. This edifies the point that USB drive performance varies depending on your motherboard’s chipset (and possibly the OS you’re running). In either case, we were able to confirm OCZ’s claim that this drive can reach a 30 Megabyte-per-second read and write speed, which is phenominal for a USB drive. Your mileage may vary depending on your chipset and operating system, which is a topic that will certainly spawn another quality OCmodshop article.
The OCZ Rally2 Turbo USB flash drive is currently one of the fastest drives in our lab, thanks to its dual-channel technology. It zooms past single-channel and non-Turbo drives.
The Rally2 Turbo should not be confused with the original Rally2, which is cheaper and yields less performance. We discovered this when testing OCZ’s ATV drive (reviewed here), which has dual-channel technology but in reality was only slightly faster than other single-channel USB drives. Unless your OCZ USB drive has “Turbo” appended to the title, then you might be disappointed with the write speed.
The Rally2 Turbo’s read speed is slightly faster than other “fast” USB drives, but the write speed is where the Rally2 shines, producing over 30MB a second write speeds (depending on your motherboard chipset). This makes the Rally2 one of the fastest in its price range that we’ve tested.
Other than the unit’s phenominal speed, there’s really nothing spectacular about the design, and because of this there’s no way to attach the unit to a keyring. There’s also no place to put the cap while the drive is in use, which increases the likelihood of losing it (the cap). The aluminum chassis has a nice finish, but will undoubtedly receive some scratches and other battle-scars after a few months of being in your pocket.
Despite these minor usability issues, the Rally2 Turbo is the flash drive that gets the most use in my daily life, simply because of its great write performance.
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