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Flash Drives have been around for almost a decade and have seen a number of technological advances improving performance, size, power and data density. Originally designed as an upgrade over a floppy disk for moving data physically from one computer to another, the modern flash drive has about as many uses as there are types of flash drives available. Transferring family photos to another family member’s computer without needing to send them over the internet, a simple means of transferring driver and updates to a fresh OS install, or even installing an operating system like Windows or Linux can all be accomplished with a flash drive. One thing has not changed though, the standard flash drive is more costly per GB and no faster than an optical disk.

Advances in NAND storage technology have improved the speed at which solid state memory devices can transfer data, along with a new faster bus to handle the capabilities it brings to storage technology.  The ADATA Nobility N005 USB 3.0 (Or Super Speed USB) advertises a Sustained Read rate of 85MBps with writes of up to 55MBps.  This is nearly 3x the throughput of a standard “fast” USB 2.0 flash drive.  From ADATA’s website:

Lightning Speed Powered by USB 3.0
The ADATA N005 USB flash drive features USB 3.0, the next generation high-speed connection standard, which offers transfer speeds 4 times faster than USB 2.0. Boasting read and write speeds up to 85 MB/s and 55 MB/s, respectively, you’ll spend much less time waiting for the transfer of large video or audio files.

We will compare both the 16GB and 32GB models of the Nobility N005 series to a 120X USB 2.0 “Sport” drive.

Full Speed, High Speed and Super Speed USB

These are the names of the current three types of USB available on most electronic devices.  They represent USB 1.1, USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 technologies respectively. Each successive technology is backwards compatible with its predecessor. Although USB 3.0 devices may have compatibility issues on USB 1.1 ports, the marketing for the ADATA USB 3.0 drive proclaims 1.1 compatibility. It should only take about 3 hours theoretically to read all 16GB of information through a 1.1 port. (This reviewer has no desire to test that out)  Aside from the names however, what makes them different?

• USB 1.1 or Full Speed USB – theoretical maximum bandwidth of 1.5 MBps. (12 Megabits per second)
• USB 2.0 or High Speed USB – theoretical maximum bandwidth of 60 MBps  (480 Megabits per second)
• USB 3.0 or Super Speed USB – theoretical maximum bandwidth of 625MBps (5 Gigabits per second).

In practice however, much like ethernet, effective speeds are often significantly lower.  This is due to a variety of reasons, the biggest of those being protocol overhead.  The whys and wherefores get very complicated and are far past the intent of this review.  A rough estimate of 35-40% is what one should expect when using any USB device.  This brings the maximum effective bandwidth of the technologies down to approximately 35MBps for USB 2.0 and 400MBps for USB 3.0.

Physical differences between 1.1/2.0 and 3.0 are in the number of signaling wires used to transmit data, as well as the difference between half and full duplex operation. USB 1.1 and 2.0 rely on one twisted pair signaling cable that is only capable of half-duplex speeds. This means that it only has full throughput in one direction at a time.  USB 3.0 offers full duplex speed as well as two additional pairs of signaling cables.  At first glance, it would appear that assuming identical memory properties, we can expect 3x the effective performance when connected to a USB 3.0 port as well as a smaller performance hit when reading and writing to the flash memory simultaneously.

The Test Subjects

The review samples 16GB and 32GB Nobility N005 (lovingly referred to by this reviewer as “noob drives”) are pictured below as well as the retail sample 8GB Sport.  Packaging is standard fare for small lightweight electronic devices that need no more than minimal protection. Blister packs to keep out moisture and keep merchandise and accessories bundled together.  Also pictured is a size comparison between the three drives.

All three USB sticks are large enough to make the paired USB ports on the backs (or fronts) of most PC’s useless.  The Nobility comes in slightly more slender than the Sport in the middle, but is about 30% longer as well. It has a brushed aluminum shell with slip-on cap and a dark brown exterior with black accents.  Round out the exterior touches is “A-DATA n005″ printed in white lettering on the top.  USB ports have not changed much in design over the last decade, but as demand increases for ever larger storage capacities, something must give.

Continue to page 2 for testing and conclusion.

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