When Size Really Matters: Smallest Flash Cards

Test Setup

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Hardware
Processor Intel Pentium 4, 2.0 GHz256 kB L2 Cache (Willamette)
Motherboard Intel 845EBTIntel 845E ChipsetBIOS BT84520A.86A.0024.P10
Memory 256 MB DDR/PC2100, CL2.0Micron/Crucial
Controller i845E UltraDMA/100-Controller (ICH4)On-Board USB 2.0 (ICH4)On-Board FireWire
Graphics card ATI Radeon SDRAM, 32 MB
Network 3COM 905TX PCI 100 MBit
Operating system Windows XP Professional 5.10.2600Service Pack 1
Benchmarks & Measurements
Performance measurements c't h2benchw 3.6
I/O performance IOMeter 2003.05.10
Drivers & Settings
Graphics driver 5.1.2001.0 (Windows XP Standard)
IDE driver Intel INF Drivers 5.02.1003
DirectX version 9.0c
Resolution 1024x768, 32 Bit, 85 Hz

USB Card Reader

For installation, we tried out three different USB-based card readers. Although none of the available micro format card vendors publish performance figures to let them grab market share from faster flash products, all three devices proved to offer acceptable performance. In general, these micro formats fit into some kind of SD adapter, which then makes them readable to any device that can read SD cards. That's why we had no difficulties with our testing.

Patrick Schmid
Editor-in-Chief (2005-2006)

Patrick Schmid was the editor-in-chief for Tom's Hardware from 2005 to 2006. He wrote numerous articles on a wide range of hardware topics, including storage, CPUs, and system builds.