Thumb Drives: Introducing 128 GB USB And High-Speed eSATA

I/O Performance Results

I/O performance is not very relevant to desktop-type applications, like storing project files, music, videos, or personal files on a thumb drive. However, it becomes important if you intend to execute applications or even an operating system from the memory device.

The combination of quick access times and fast read throughput allows for quick file server I/O performance in the case of OCZ’s Throttle drive. In this benchmark, the interface type is less important, revealing the actual differences of each device on a flash configuration level.

Our Web server test does not execute writes, only lots of small block random read operations. The eSATA connections seem to have obvious advantages here. These results are still clearly faster than the performance you’d get from conventional hard drives for Web server-type I/O operations.