USB Thumb drives have come a long way in the past 6-7 years, originally 16MB was a large drive and they weren't exactly cheap. As with all things technology related they have progressed nicely from 8 or 16MB devices back in the day, up to 2GB devices being offered now. As with most things storage related the device has gotten smaller and the speed has gotten faster. Add to that the huge amount of handy software that can be run from a USB drive and you have a pretty nifty little tool.
Today we are taking a look at the 2GB Rally drive from OCZ, it also comes in smaller sizes of 512MB and 1GB if you feel 2GB is more than you'll need. The Rally uses dual channel technology and OCZ claims it to be the fastest USB thumb drive on the market.
The OCZ Rally is tiny, it is literally the size of my thumb. I don't know why but I was expecting something bigger, my old 64MB USB 1 drive was twice the size. The Rally comes packed in a plastic blister pack and includes the Drive, a lanyard, a USB cable and a key ring. There is no software provided so installation is as easy as plugging the drive into a USB port.
One thing that the OCZ Rally does not have that many other USB drives do is additional software. You wont find any software at all included with the Rally, many manufacturers provide encryption/security software with their thumb drives. However there are tons of programs available for USB drives ranging from free/shareware to paid programs. I have spent many hours looking through sites with software for USB drives available and was surprised at the volume of products available.
Testing
For testing I'll be using HDTach 3 and comparing my results to two other thumb drives I have on hand. One is a 128MB USB 2.0 Lexar JumpDrive and the other is a 64MB unknown brand freebie drive I got for filling out a survey from Microsoft, we'll call this drive old and busted.
The chart below represents Average and Peak read time for each device, the numbers represent MB/s and the higher the numbers the better
OK, really no surprise here against the old USB 1 drive. What is surprising is how bad the OCZ Rally smoked the USB 2.0 Lexar drive, it peaked at over 3X the speed and averaged approx. 2.5X the speed. OCZ's claims of this being a fast USB drive are definitely proven in this test.
According to these and all of the other tests I've seen the OCZ Rally is the fastest USB drive currently on the market. That's a pretty big accomplishment if you ask me, considering other manufacturers have been making USB drives for a while now. OCZ's choice of dual channel technology definitely pays of here.
I have owned a USB drive for years, but never put it to much use, when the Rally arrived I started looking in to what it could be used for and now I don't think I could live without it. Aside from the obvious uses like transferring files from one PC to another you can use it for things like an MP3 player using one of the many mobile players available. If you are a computer tech there are many many tools that can be run from a USB drive like Everest, CPUID, memtest etc. If your motherboard supports booting from a USB device you can even run Linux from the device. I use mine to keep current drivers on, as well as a lot of the tools I use from day to day. My backup program also writes all of my backup data to the USB drive every night.
Pros: SPEED!, up to 2GB capacity, Lifetime warranty, stylish black aluminum casing, size not to big, not to small
Cons: No additional software, this really isn't a con considering the amount of freely available software that is out there, but for some that might be an issue. Some form of encryption software would be nice.
Bottom Line: If you are looking for a fast high capacity USB thumb drive the Rally should be the only one on your list.
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