USB Drives are everywhere these days, with the price of flash memory falling you can pick them up with high capacities very cheaply. So with all of these choices is that cheap USB drive really worth it? Or are you just getting what you pay for?

Up on the review block today I have the OCZ Rally2 Turbo 4gig flash drive, the OCZ Rally series is very popular for it’s speed and durability and has won numerous awards. I’ve got six other flash drives on hand to put up against the Rally2 to just see how fast it is compared to them, including OCZs own ATV Turbo and the speedy Super Talent 200X. Is the Rally2 Turbo all that? Continue on to find out…

OCZ Rally2 Turbo 4gb USB 2.0 Flash Drive Review

Author: Kristofer Brozio

Sponsor: OCZ Technology

Tech Specs,Features or the Basic Info:

OCZ Rally2 Turbo 4gb USB 2.0 Flash Drive

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 todays 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.

Specs:

-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

Accessories

-Lanyard

Blazing Speed

-Up to 35MB/s (read), 30MB/s (write)

Part Numbers

-OCZUSBR2TDC-4GB  

A Better Look at Things

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The OCZ Rally2 Turbo USB Drive comes in the dreaded sealed plastic clamshell package that nee3ds to be ripped open to get at the contents. The package itself is attractive and well done, we can plainly see the drive itself on the front. On the back we can see the lanyard and USB extension cable on the along with as listing of specs and features.

Here’s everything unpacked, lanyard, Rally2 and the USB Extension cable:

On one side of the Rally2 Turbo is the OCZ logo, and the other side has the Rally2 Turbo name and capacity listed at the bottom.

The included lanyard is nice, and it even has the OCZ web address printed on it so you can show your OCZ pride!

Installation, Testing and Comparison

The OCZ Rally2 Turbo has a very bright orange LED indicator on the end that lights up solid when plugged in and blinks while in use.

I’ve got several USB drives on hand from numerous companies, seven including the Rally2 Turbo, so it should give us a nice comparison.

The one you see labeled ‘Wood USB’ in the chart is a wooden USB drive from Brando WorkShop, and the one labeled ‘Generic USB’ is just that a no-name freebie drive I got from where I can’t recall.

Here we have HD Tach RW from SimpliSoftware. This set of tests shows us the results for Burst Speed, Random Access, Average Write, and Average Read.

Lower scores are better for Random Access /ms .

Higher Scores are better for Read, Write and Burst tests results shown in MB/s.

Both OCZ drives and the Super Talent are very close in scoring, with all the others just following far behind.

SiSoft Sandra Removable Storage Benchmark:

Combined Device Index: is a composite figure representing an overall performance rating based on the average of the Combined Index figures over the four file sizes. (Higher is better, i.e. better performance)

Endurance Factor: is a figure representing the Wear and Life Expectancy of flash devices; this is obtained by dividing the average performance (normal condition, i.e. sequential write) to the lowest performance (high-stress condition, i.e. same block re-write).

It measures the relative improvement of endurance caused by the wear levelling or flash management algorithm; the absolute endurance of a device (i.e. its expected life-time) is directly dependent, in addition to this Endurance Factor, on the nominal manufacturer rating of maximum erase/reprogram cycles, which is typically 100,000+ for SLC and 10,000+ for MLC devices. (Higher is better, i.e. longer life-time for the device)

For the results, higher scores are better, and I threw in scores for my Maxtor SATA drive to give you a comparison.

Here again we see the same results, both OCZ drives and the Super Talent are very good performers.

The final set of tests is using DiskBench from Nodesoft, I like using DiskBench for these types of reviews because it gives you a real world benchmark and while HDTach and Sandra are nice not everyone knows what they mean really.

In using DiskBench I can show you performance number that anyone can relate to, DiskBench will tell us the time it takes to transfer to and from the USB drive and the time it takes to read a file from the same USB drive, I think everyone can understand the lower the times the better performance.

I used a 385MB .AVI video file for the tests to simulate what the average user might be doing with their USB drive.

And yet again we see close scores with the two OCZ drives and the Super Talent, but we see the Rally2 Turbo is a couple seconds slower at copying from it than the others.

Summary:

From the tests there really is no clear winner, are you that pressed that a couple seconds will matter that much to you?

The OCZ Rally2 Turbo USB Drive is a very good choice, it’s fast, and being it has a metal housing makes it attractive for its durability as well.

While it may not be the fastest in synthetic benchmarks, in real world experience and usage I could not feel any difference, the times to copy and access all seemed the same to me while using the top three drives in my testing.

DragonSteelMods gives the OCZ Rally2 Turbo USB Drive a 4.5 out of 5 score and our Recommended Award as well.

Pros:

-Metal housing makes it durable

-Included strap

-Good performing

Cons:

-Not the fastest drive out there

I would like to thank OCZ for the chance to review the Rally2 Turbo and for their continued support of DSM.

Discuss, Questions HERE

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