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Installation
Nothing much to cover here. Like your
average flash drive, they are plug-n-play and quickly recognized on both a
Windows XP and Windows Vista system. However, unlike the Pico A reviewed
here some time ago, which was clearly identified by vendor and model in
Device Manager, both the Pico-C and Pico-E Slide are labeled differently but
still found under Disk Drives on both Operation Systems.
For those of you running Vista, a clear
indication that the flash drive you have is capable of providing high
transfer speeds is by whether or not Vista will give you the option to
enable
ReadyBoost upon connecting it. Both the Pico-C and Pico-E will
offer this capability but these are certainly not drives you'll want to
sacrifice for this somewhat Gimmicky feature. These are flash drives
that belong on your keychain!
Performance
As
I do with all flash drives, plenty of testing is done using a number of
tools that measure overall performance. This includes synthetic benchmarking
suites as well as tools designed to simulate real-life performance. They
include Sisoftware's SANDRA,
HD Tune and the excellent DiskBench
utility from NodeSoft.
In
addition to providing the results of these two flash drives, I will also
throw in the results of both their Pico-A and the speedy PQI i810 in order
to give you all a better idea of what to expect from a drive this small.
Performance Results - SANDRA 2009
While I personally depend on other tools over SANDRA when testing flash
drives, there's one test I always like to conduct. That test is there
Removable Storage Benchmark, which I will explain briefly below before
getting to the results.
Starting with the "Combined Index", these results are based on standard file
operations typical with these storage devices. This consists of writing to
the drive, reading from it and then finally deleting it from the flash drive
itself. The results, based on a set number of file sizes, will give you the
Combined Index, all of which are based on operations per minute.
NOTE: I have removed the Endurance Factor results from current storage
reviews due to high inconsistency between some of the latest builds of
SANDRA and based on some extensive testing to prove the results are not
credible.
Based on the poor performance from their
Pico-A, I went into testing with low expectations. Ultimately
surprising though, both the Pico-C and Pico-E are no comparison and even
manage to take the top spot in terms of drives in this class that
are considered the smallest on the market. In fact, both of these
little gems even manage to surpass the excellent and speedy PQI i810 in
terms of the combined index results shown above.
Performance Results - HD Tune
The next set of tests I like to perform are
with HD Tune. For those unfamiliar with this small yet practical utility, it
is a tool primarily designed to measure hard disk performance. However, you
can use it with removable storage devices as well to get a better indication
as to how the drive performs. What's nice about this tool is that it is
similar to Nero's CD-DVD Speed in the sense that it will provide you with a
clear look at how the disk "behaves" during the entire testing process.
It was when running these tests that I finally
realized these two later models in the series are no comparison to their
first. Usually, manufacturer specs are a bit out of the norm when it comes to
transfer speeds. However, only when referring to these two particular
models in the series, they manage to truly live up to their claimed
performance capabilities. Just take a look at the comparison above.
Despite the size, Super Talent markets these little drives as quite speedy,
capable of speeds up to 30MB/s (200x). With that in mind, the results
here were completely unexpected and quite impressive. Both the Pico-C
and Pico-E perform just about the same but are capable of maximum transfer
speeds that are even slightly above specification. I ran these test
numerous times and all results were highly consistent. It is even able
to outperform the excellent PQI i810. However, I find their marketing
and product info slightly misleading. Upon first glance, it is obvious
that they claim each model in this series are capable of such high speeds.
That's really not the case. The Pico-A is significantly slower and
quite sluggish when transferring data. In fact, it is one of the
slowest drives I've tested in this class. Look more closely at their
website, and you'll find they claim lower capacity models are slower but
results put them way below 150X speeds. Anyways, looking at the results
above, you simply can't go wrong with their Pico-C or Pico-E in terms of
performance.
Actual Performance Results
I always like to end with one particular tool
I consistently use for storage device reviews that will provide you with the
most accurate results possible. These tests are always done with the
excellent DiskBench Utility. Once again, for those who are unfamiliar with
this application, DiskBench is a utility designed to measure real life
transfer rates. Unlike synthetic benchmark utilities, this application will
allow you to create an image file of a user specified size and allow you to
transfer to and from the device you are testing in order to capture
real-time read/write transfer rates and times. Other than running these
tests on your own without the aid of any tools, it is simply the most
accurate utility to capture reliable read/write times of any storage
product.
In addition to a comparison, I threw in some
2GB transfer results for both of these higher capacity drives reviewed here.
As you can see in the chart above, both the
Pico-C and Pico-E are remarkably fast little drives.
Also, performance between these particular two drives were fairly identical,
with the exception of the 2GB data transfer test. As far as what to
expect from larger file transfers, you are looking at only 1.78 minutes to
transfer 1GB of data and just under 4 1/2 minutes to transfer a full 2GBs of
data. Finally, this also helps me to show you all just how slow the
Pico-A drive is. Its performance is quite poor and not one model I
recommend in the series.
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