I recently came into possession of a Kingston DataTraveler HyperX USB 3.0 memory stick(thanks wasd.ro for this!). It’s quite an incredibly powerful mobile storing solution for those that are always on the run, and a traditional portable hard-disk is not an option. The specs on such a memory stick leaves you with the mouth wide open. But of course, you have to own a motherboard with USB 3.0 ports, else it will run like a regular high-performance memory stick on an USB 2.0.
The transfer speeds are rated as following:
| USB 3.0 | READ: 225 MB/s | WRITE: 135 MB/s |
| USB 2.0 | READ: 30 MB/s | WRITE: 30 MB/s |
Well unfortunately I don’t own a motherboard with USB 3.0 ports, but the transfer speeds are good for USB 2.0 too. I tested the memory stick with Crystal DiskMark. Here are the results:
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CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 x64 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
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* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]
Sequential Read : 35.192 MB/s
Sequential Write : 26.237 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 32.720 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 1.510 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 3.003 MB/s [ 733.2 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 0.083 MB/s [ 20.3 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 4.233 MB/s [ 1033.5 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 0.085 MB/s [ 20.7 IOPS]
Test : 1000 MB [I: 0.0% (0.0/119.3 GB)] (x5)
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CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 x64 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
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* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]
Sequential Read : 35.797 MB/s
Sequential Write : 17.298 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 34.510 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 14.852 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 3.787 MB/s [ 924.6 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 0.868 MB/s [ 212.0 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 4.656 MB/s [ 1136.8 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 0.913 MB/s [ 222.8 IOPS]
Test : 50 MB [I: 0.0% (0.0/119.3 GB)] (x5)
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CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 x64 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
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* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]
Sequential Read : 35.431 MB/s
Sequential Write : 26.927 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 34.681 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 0.797 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 3.904 MB/s [ 953.0 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 0.080 MB/s [ 19.5 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 4.581 MB/s [ 1118.4 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 0.000 MB/s [ 0.0 IOPS]
Test : 4000 MB [I: 0.0% (0.0/119.3 GB)] (x5)
As you can see, the transfer speeds are quite consistent with the change of file size, but it suffers almost a 10 MB/s drop when I drop the file size to 50 mb/s. I imagine the speeds for lots of very small files get even worse. Of course, this differs with the type of format. The stick I tested was formatted using exFAT( I posted a list of formatting options for the USB memory stick here). The conclusion from the results? If you were to copy 128 GB from this stick( you can’t actually, the stick has 119 GB in reality( it differs from one to another)) it would take 1 hour. It’s not that good when writing at 17 MB/s: ~2 hours. These reading and writing times can be reduced under USB 3.0: ~10min for reading and ~16min for writing.
