Hello,
 
I would like the opinions of others with more experience. I run most of my apps as Portable apps on my USB flash drive. Currently that drive is a 2 GB Lexar Lightning. I needed more space so I researched which drives were fastest.  
 
I first purchased an 8 GB Corsair Flash Voyager GT. I went through 3 drives and the second RMA replacement was slower than the one I sent back, so Corsair refunded my money.
 
Next I purchased a 4 GB OCZ ATV Turbo. It lived up to the read benchmarks, but the write times were less than half those advertised. Here are the benchmark scores I got using ATTO Disk Benchmark:
 
8 GB Corsair Flash Voyager GT
Advertised
Read 34 MB/sec
Write 28 MB/sec
My Benchmark
Read 23924
Write 21203
 
4 GB OCZ ATV Turbo
Advertised
Read 33-35 MB/sec
Write 26-30 MB/sec
My Benchmark
Read 32736
Write 13030
 
Some might say it is just the PC it is being tested on. My Office PC is less than 1 year old, a 3 Mhz Dell with 1 meg of RAM. I am getting benchmarks close to the advertised speed with my 2 GB Lexar Lightning:
 
2 GB Lexar Lightning
Advertised
Read 30 MB/sec
Write 21 MB/sec
My Benchmark
Read 25960
Write 22557
 
What gives with these crappy benchmark scores? I don't mind paying a premium for a fast USB drive, I would just like to get what I pay for. I am just not happy with how poorly these drives come to their advertised speed. Are others finding the same thing? What drives can you recommend that are fast?
 
Thanks,
 
8-)  Ed

 
I'm going to assume that you mean 3Ghz Dell (P4?) with 1 GB of RAM? I believe its the nature of the beast with the write times, why do you need those extra MB/s anyway (just curious)? I think its also poor marketing tactics, trying to make their product slightly better than the competitors because MOST people don't benchmark flash drives

your problem is the 1mb of ram. i don't know how your os even loads! id upgrade to 1gb.

The problem, I believe, is that the larger capacities are indeed slower than the smaller capacities.  I was told from an instructor of mine that the larger capacities actually use multiple states of the flash memory (on, off, half on, etc) in order to store more data, so that could indeed be a huge factor in this.
 
Just get a second stick of the lightning if it's that important!

Thanks for the answers & sorry for the mis-typing. I was at home and was typing from memory. My office PC is a Dell Optiplex GX620 Pentium D 3.2 GHz with .99 GB of RAM.  
 
I now understand that larger drives are slower. That is why I went for 4GB on the OCZ drive.  
 
Do any 4GB drives live up to 26-28 MB write times? What drives do you all like?

I to am looking for a reliable thumbdrive. I go threw them like underwear!
 
I just had to rma a 2 GB Corsair Flash Voyager GT, It seems fast but I never benched it. I use it for portable apps so speed is a must. The slower drives slow down the apps responce. My Corsair only lasted 6 months before crappin out on me.

I use OCZ 4gb thumbdrives heavily. Will bench mark a few of them when I get a chance. It is fast enough to run any program I install onto it, which is my main purpose of using them. Have yet to have one go bad.

another key component is what your using to benchmark...
I take it your OS would be some version of windows...
you might get their bencmark results if run in a specific build of linux... duno how they tested it...  
perhaps calcualted.. speed of chips minus total latency...  
to create a theoretical speed that could be achieved with the ideal OS?