For the last few years, usually around Christmas time, I’ve treated myself to a new USB flash drive. Doubling the capacity each time, I started off with a 2GB stick then moved to 4, 8, 16 and then 32 last year. However, although the 32GB is a really useful capacity and I went for a branded memory stick (SanDisk), I hadn’t been paying attention to performance and its slow write speed has always bugged me. It all came to a head a few nights ago when I had to take a copy of a Virtual Machine off my laptop. The 23GB file took TWO HOURS to write to the the thumb drive! Time for Christmas to come early this year.
Enter the Kingston Traveler HyperX 64GB, the first USB 3.0 device I own and one that my Retina MacBook can really take advantage of. This is no ordinary USB thumb drive. Its 8-channel architecture means its performance is more akin to an SSD than a regular USB stick.
Kingston quotes performance figures of 225MB/s read and 135MB/s write and we achieved 243MB/s read and 110MB/s write using the BlackMagic Disk Speed test. So what does that mean in the real world? Well the file that took two hours to write to my previous generation piece of junk flash drive took less than THREE MINUTES to copy to the HyperX!
To re-iterate, there are 3 things at work here. The ridiculously poor (perhaps even faulty?) performance of my old flash drive. The Huge speed benefits of USB 3 over USB 2 and the uber fast tech in the drive itself. If you haven’t upgraded your USB flash drive in a while it maybe time to treat yourself too. The 64GB Kingston Traveler HyperX is currently £70 and there are 128GB and 256GB versions available too.
Kingston Technology 64GB USB 3.0 DTHX Flash Drive Features
- USB 3.0 Backwards Compatible – with USB 2.0
- Blazingly fast Speed – USB 3.0:
- Five-year warranty
Featuring a high-speed 8-channel architecture that provides USB 3.0 data transfer speed, DataTraveler HyperX 3.0 is the perfect solution for expanding a notebook’s storage and for quickly storing, transferring and backing up any digital lifestyle.
Users will save time associated with opening and transferring large files and applications between devices. They will also experience less wait time, even when working with data-heavy content.
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Last update on 2024-04-08 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API
Did you actually run the VM off the USB stick? I did already order the same stick for offloading virtual machines from my Retina Macbook. What I have read is that the poor IOPS speed causes problems on most USB sticks when actually running the machine, but hoped that this stick would be tolerable.
jonttu – sorry no, I was just moving the VM.