Testing:

Testing will consist of a quick look at the results from CrystalDiskMark 3.0, as well as the analysis of some real world file transfers.

I initially started testing the Xporter Rage 16GB USB flash drive unaware of a special formatting utility available from Patriot Memory that was intended to make the drive perform up to its fullest potential. I had initially used an NTFS format on the drive to allow for storing of large files. I then became aware of the formatting utility and that it apparently used an FAT format (which will not allow files over 4GB). Testing then proceeded with testing done with both the Patriot Memory utility format and the Windows created FAT32 format.

CrystalDiskMark 3.0:

CrystalDiskMark 3.0 was run on the Xporter Rage 16GB USB flash drive first, just to get a gauge of how close the drive's performance comes to the published specifications.

The screenshot below details the results with a Windows FAT32 format applied. What we see is that the drive is definitely capable of impressive read speeds that exceed the published specification (although not the best I have seen), but that the write speeds fall well short of the published specification.


Windows FAT32 format

The drive was then reformatted using the Patriot Memory utility format, the system was rebooted, and the test was run again. This time around the read speed dropped by less than 1MB/s, which I can live with since the results are still good, but the write speed increased by close to 3MB/s. That is a pretty big boost, but the drive still falls short of the published specification of 25MB/s... That is, until you re-read the specification which says Up to 25MB/s Write". OK, so by that wording a speed of 1MB/s would not discredit the published data, so falling just a few short technically does not either.


Patriot Memory utility format

The read speed specification states "Up to 27MB/s Read", and according to CrystalDiskMark 3.0, the Xporter Rage 16GB USB flash drive ignores that and goes right past it by a few MB/s.