| OCZ Rally 512MB USB Flash Drive
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Testing:
OCZ advertises the Rally as one of the first USB flash drives to use Dual Channel technology that significantly speeds up both read and write operations. Their web page (summarized on the previous page) claims read speeds up to 28MB/s and write speeds approaching 15 MB/s for the 512MB version.
All devices were tested on the following system:
• DFI Lanparty NF4 Ultra D
• Venice Core 3200+ AMD A64 Processor
• Windows XP Pro SP 2
• Western Digital 36gig Raptor System Disk
• 2x Seagate 120gig drives in Raid 1 for data
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Testing was done using onboard USB 2.0 ports.
I decided to put the OCZ Rally drive up against a few of the other 512MB USB 2.0 thumb drives I had laying around. The first is an iomega Micro Mini; the second is a Transcend Jetflash 110.
 
Running the three drives through Sisoft Sandra's File System Benchmark shows that the Dual Channel Technology works. Read speeds were easily twice that of both the iomega and Transcend offerings. Write speeds were not quite double, but were still much faster.
Next I ran all three drives through Simpli Software's HD Tach. Results were no different; the OCZ Rally drive easily outperforms the rest. OCZ's claim of 28MB/s read speeds is completely accurate and the write speeds, although not quite 15MB/s, still outshined the Transcend and iomega.
Finally I wanted to see how the numbers would translate into real world speeds. I created an ISO of Windows XP Home SP1 that ended up being 485MB and proceeded to time writing it to each drive, then reading it back to a different hard drive. The times below show that even in real life, The OCZ Rally is fast, real fast.
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