thefrozencoder Programming and Technology blog

Here in Canada Best Buy is selling 8GB USB Flash Drives from Duracell (who knew they made USB drives) for $19.99. Now I have seen drives of this size cheaper but to come from a "known" name brand like this made me wonder how good the drive actually was.

When I got home I tested the Read/Write speed using the USB Flash Drive Tester (found here). I also tested my 4GB ScanDisk Cruzer Micro as a simple control. While I am not sure if having two drives of different size matters the results were:

• Duracell
  • Write: Tested total 7645.999MB in 0:11:52 with 10.741MB/s
  • Read: Tested total 7645.999MB in 0:08:59 with 14.177MB/s
• ScanDisk
  1. Write: Tested total 3919.840MB in 0:14:46 with 4.431MB/s
  2. Read: Tested total 3919.840MB in 0:07:56 with 8.234MB/s

While I am not sure how acurate my tests were but it does make you wonder just because it is cheaper is it really cheap?