Kingston Technology U3 DataTraveler 2GB

Test results

Now its time to put the drive to the test and give you a general idea of what the performance might be. CDR-Zone.COM have found SiSoft Sandra to be a most reliable piece of software for general benchmarking, which is good because I've used two benchmarks from the suite. One should remember that these benchmarks are an accurate recording of a moment in time under controlled conditions, but results may vary in real-life situations. It all depends on the system, USB port, data and load used with the drives. Please don't use the benchmarks as a definite source but more for a general idea of what it can do in measured and controlled situations.

DataTraveler test results These benchmarks allow us to show you the test results of the Kingston DataTraveler U3 per separate benchmark. Sisoft Sandra 2007 File System Benchmark Sisoft Sandra 2007 Removable Storage Benchmark HDTune Benchmark HDTach Benchmark CDCheck Benchmark

The drive is fast and stable. It can read faster then it can write and it has a low access time. Also the amount of operations per minute is high, making it fast in that area as well. This is useful when using the U3 applications installed on the drive, it makes them start and run quicker.

I've tested the drives with a security part that was unlocked as well. There wasn't any significant change to show you on that area. The drive simply performed the same no matter the lock down.

The compatibility tests are designed to show some real life cases on how the drive may perform. I have used different types of media on the drive and try to play, access or load it and see how well it performs. In this case the drive is also split up into two volumes, so I've played, accessed and loaded from both at the same time as well. Some types of media have theoretical bit-rates to make them play ok, if the drives don't perform as fast as they should, the media should be unplayable. Below you will find the results listed.

The DataTraveler had no problems serving up this media. All of the files opened normally and could even be used and played in combination with each other. At no time did it falter or stutter.

The bit-rate values for the operating systems, documents and pictures don't apply here; those types of data use what ever throughput from the file system is available. That means if the media, on which it is carried, is slow, it will load slowly and the other way around too. However if the media is too slow you will receive errors and timeouts.

It isn't mentioned whether this drive can boot, but I tried anyway. The smaller volume of the drive is marked as CD-ROM and can't be changed, so you can't boot from it, even though it will show up. The second larger volume is free to change and will appear as hard disk. Even though I repeated the same process as with other drives, it wouldn't boot the operating systems. I suspect the U3 technology is preventing it from happening; I'll have to look into this when I have more U3 drives.