32GB OCZ ATV USB Flash Drive Review

[Apoptosis]

32GB OCZ ATV USB Flash Drive Review

With consumers needing more space the 32GB flash drives are a perfect solution for those that always seem to be low on mobile storage space. The shock-proof ATV series of flash drives have been around for nearly a year, but only recently has a 32GB version been available and that is what we are looking at today. Read on to see how this monster USB Flash Drive does!

When it comes to using the OCZ ATV Flash drive, it was found to be a solid performer over the months. We've used it on the test bench, for Ready Boost on Windows Vista, and for travel with no problems at all. As for the durability of the drive, it has survived being put through the laundry wash and a number of trips in the mouth of a dog and cat when they like to run off with important things. The OCZ ATV is one tough drive no doubt about that!

Article Title: 32GB OCZ ATV USB Flash Drive Review
Article URL: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/664/1/
Pricing At Time of Print: $146.99

[skier]

nice main pic i can't understand why anyone would use more than 8 gig, you could run an entire PC with that much, who needs a hard drive

[dicecca112]

It would be ridiculously slow, but would be nice to run a persistant Live Cd version of Linux (ubuntu comes to mind)

[FeRaL]

Love the dog, and the review. Quite impressive little, errr... large flash drive. Not sure what I would do with that much space, but I imagine it would be great for taking your VMs with you where ever you go.

[Dragon_Cooler]

one question i have... (forgive the ignorance)

Do thumb drives of today really only have a set amount of write times before they die off?? If so wouldnt that mean a larger drive filled more often die quicker???

[Alathald]

So what OS does your dog run? I'm thinking our pomeranian runs vista because he's rather slow, very annoying and likes running into walls and getting in the way...

Bad jokes aside, I'm surprised how well that drive performs for it's size, I'm currently running Knoppix persistent on a 2Gb (much faster than running off LiveCD) but I'd love to get one of those and have Ubuntu with me everywhere I go.

[martini161]

The Read speed of nearly 30GB/Second also makes this one of the fastest USB Flash drives that we have ever used, which is a good thing due to the amount of data that can be stored on it. Moving roughly 32GB of data (actual storage size is 29.8GB) off the drive still takes a fair amount of time.

Holy crap thats a fast flash drive nice review though, but i can never see my self every using any more that the 2gb flash drive i won from here a while ago

[AresNZ]

Two questions, if this is supposedly as rugged as the Corsair Survivor which can be boiled, frozen, droped from 15 metres, run over by a car etc etc why wasn't the OCZ ATV put through the same tests if you claim this is as rugged as the Survivor?
Also why wasn't this benched against any Corsair flashdrives to see exactly how well or poorly this actually performs against a premier flash drive manufacturer?
These reason's are why I take most reviews with a grain of salt and prefer to make my own decisions or only read reviews by unbiased review sites.

[DMB2000uk]

I hope you did not just imply that Legit Reviews is biased in its reviews... you should know that Legit Reviews was founded upon the principle of giving legit accurate information, with unbiased reviews.

There were no claims made that the ATV was more rugged than the corsair, or even that the ATV was equally as rugged as the corsair. It was just noted in a passing comment that the corsair was as rugged as the ATV (notice the difference ). The Corsair can exceed the ATV in ruggedness and this comment will still be true.

The reason why this drive wasn't put through all the 'stress testing' that you listed is that the aim of the review wasn't to find the breaking point of the drive, but rather to give an overall guide to it's speed and performance.

Lastly as for why the review didn't contain any Corsair drives, that is because Corsair haven't sent any drives out to legit reviews for to test. If LR hasn't got any drives to test they can't be included in the results.


Welcome to the forums by the way,

Dan

[dicecca112]

I hope you did not just imply that Legit Reviews is biased in its reviews... you should know that Legit Reviews was founded upon the principle of giving legit accurate information, with unbiased reviews.

There were no claims made that the ATV was more rugged than the corsair, or even that the ATV was equally as rugged as the corsair. It was just noted in a passing comment that the corsair was as rugged as the ATV (notice the difference ). The Corsair can exceed the ATV in ruggedness and this comment will still be true.

The reason why this drive wasn't put through all the 'stress testing' that you listed is that the aim of the review wasn't to find the breaking point of the drive, but rather to give an overall guide to it's speed and performance.

Lastly as for why the review didn't contain any Corsair drives, that is because Corsair haven't sent any drives out to legit reviews for to test. If LR hasn't got any drives to test they can't be included in the results.


Welcome to the forums by the way,

Dan

You also have to realize that all our reviewers aren't some elite snobs who feel its there right to get the best gear, or have a bone to pick with a certain company. We are all average users, who run the gambit from real power users like Nate, to casual users like myself. We run the gambit in professions as well, some of us are/were students (Myself), we have degrees in Biology and Computer Science. If a product impresses us we say it, if it doesn't we say it.

[AresNZ]

I hope you did not just imply that Legit Reviews is biased in its reviews... you should know that Legit Reviews was founded upon the principle of giving legit accurate information, with unbiased reviews.

There were no claims made that the ATV was more rugged than the corsair, or even that the ATV was equally as rugged as the corsair. It was just noted in a passing comment that the corsair was as rugged as the ATV (notice the difference ). The Corsair can exceed the ATV in ruggedness and this comment will still be true.

The reason why this drive wasn't put through all the 'stress testing' that you listed is that the aim of the review wasn't to find the breaking point of the drive, but rather to give an overall guide to it's speed and performance.

Lastly as for why the review didn't contain any Corsair drives, that is because Corsair haven't sent any drives out to legit reviews for to test. If LR hasn't got any drives to test they can't be included in the results.


Welcome to the forums by the way



Dan

Thanks for the welcome Dan
Ok, I didn't say that the ATV was more rugged than the Survivor only as rugged.

I did not realise that Corsair hadn't supplied LR with any flash drives, which obviously would make it impossible to compare the two. It would have been good to see these manufacturers go head to head.

And as for my comment about LR being biased, that was way below the belt and for this I apologise, totally uncalled for.

[Apoptosis]

Two questions, if this is supposedly as rugged as the Corsair Survivor which can be boiled, frozen, droped from 15 metres, run over by a car etc etc why wasn't the OCZ ATV put through the same tests if you claim this is as rugged as the Survivor?
Also why wasn't this benched against any Corsair flashdrives to see exactly how well or poorly this actually performs against a premier flash drive manufacturer?
These reason's are why I take most reviews with a grain of salt and prefer to make my own decisions or only read reviews by unbiased review sites.

Corsair is a long time advertiser of Legit Reviews and I talk to them 3-4 times a week. I'm actually in San Jose right now and just drove past them. Corsair has never supplied LR with any Survivor products to be flat out honest. The last thumb drive we got from them was an 8GB Flash Voyager and it died while I was testing it. I returned it to them and they said it was broken and never sent another one out. I haven't seen a flash drive from Corsair since. Corsair sends us memory kits all the time though. If you want to see some Corsair products in the lineup then shoot them an e-mail and let them know... Link this review or thread... Our readers do have power... I tested every drive I had laying around in those charts, even the free one that I got in the mail (PNY Attache, which is at Best Buy).

If you want to see some Corsair flash drive reviews done here on LR please let them know - [email protected] and we will do them!

[Dragon_Cooler]

one question i have... (forgive the ignorance)

Do thumb drives of today really only have a set amount of write times before they die off?? If so wouldnt that mean a larger drive filled more often die quicker???

[AresNZ]

Two questions, if this is supposedly as rugged as the Corsair Survivor which can be boiled, frozen, droped from 15 metres, run over by a car etc etc why wasn't the OCZ ATV put through the same tests if you claim this is as rugged as the Survivor?
Also why wasn't this benched against any Corsair flashdrives to see exactly how well or poorly this actually performs against a premier flash drive manufacturer?
These reason's are why I take most reviews with a grain of salt and prefer to make my own decisions or only read reviews by unbiased review sites.

Corsair is a long time advertiser of Legit Reviews and I talk to them 3-4 times a week. I'm actually in San Jose right now and just drove past them. Corsair has never supplied LR with any Survivor products to be flat out honest. The last thumb drive we got from them was an 8GB Flash Voyager and it died while I was testing it. I returned it to them and they said it was broken and never sent another one out. I haven't seen a flash drive from Corsair since. Corsair sends us memory kits all the time though. If you want to see some Corsair products in the lineup then shoot them an e-mail and let them know... Link this review or thread... Our readers do have power... I tested every drive I had laying around in those charts, even the free one that I got in the mail (PNY Attache, which is at Best Buy).

If you want to see some Corsair flash drive reviews done here on LR please let them know - [email protected] and we will do them!

I also talk to Corsair on a regular basis, I'll ask my contact the possibilities of sending you flashdrives as well as the memory they currently send you.
Are you also interested in reviewing their PSU's?

[DMB2000uk]

one question i have... (forgive the ignorance)

Do thumb drives of today really only have a set amount of write times before they die off?? If so wouldn't that mean a larger drive filled more often die quicker???

Sorry DC I saw your post earlier and meant to reply, flash memory like the ones in thumb drives do have a limited number of write and erase (which is writing really) cycles. It is not the whole drive that has this limit, but the individual cell things that store the 1's and 0's. Smart drives should have some kind of wear levelling feature that spreads out the writes to the drive so that the memory is used evenly, and if it is really clever it will bypass sectors that are dying/dead.

So with the wear leveling, the bigger the drive the longer it will last. Here is a little case study

Assuming that the drive can sustain its max write speed of 11.73MB/s permanently, and a worst case scenario of 100,000 writes (this figure has been floating about for some time (late 90s), in reality drives will have gotten way beyond this number now (like in the low millions of write cycles)) the drive would be able to be constantly written to night and day for well over 8 years!!

(Maths for you: 100,000 writes x 30515.2MB formatted capacity / 11.73MB/s write speed = 260146632 seconds of life
Which equals 8.46 years!

So putting the drive into normal use you can see that it will be outclassed and obsolete before it packs in from write limitations

Dan

[DMB2000uk]

Thanks for the welcome Dan
Ok, I didn't say that the ATV was more rugged than the Survivor only as rugged.

I did not realise that Corsair hadn't supplied LR with any flash drives, which obviously would make it impossible to compare the two. It would have been good to see these manufacturers go head to head.

And as for my comment about LR being biased, that was way below the belt and for this I apologise, totally uncalled for.

On behalf of LR, apology accepted

You may have noticed that LR's users are rather passionate about the site and will jump to defend it, so try not to feel too bad that you were the one getting jumped on to defend it. We don't hold grudges though, so feel free to stick around knowing you won't be looked down upon for what you once said

Dan

[Dragon_Cooler]

Dan thank you for the reply!!! and thanks for replying!

[johngalt47]

I would like to see a speed comparison between this flash drive and the Lexar Lightning Jump Drive. I have several different flash drives and the Lexar seems to be the fastest both reading and writing.