I’m pondering a project which will need a reasonably fast write usb flash drive so I decided to root around in drawers behind cupbaords and under sofas to find some to test.

All are formatted as FAT32 and tested on my Debian linux box.

read test conducted using dd if=/dev/sde of=/dev/null bs=10000 count=10000
write test conducted using dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sde bs=1M count=100

Sandisk cruzer slice 8GB
http://www.sandisk.co.uk/products/usb-flash-drives/sandisk-cruzer-slice
r 100 MB copied, 6.01249 s, 16.6 MB/s
w 105 MB copied, 28.5709 s, 3.7 MB/s

integral Courier 4GB
http://www.integralmemory.com/product/courier-usb-flash-drive
r 100 MB copied, 6.60859 s, 15.1 MB/s
w 105 MB copied, 23.9367 s, 4.4 MB/s

Sony Microvault 4GB
http://www.sony.co.uk/support/en/product/USM4GL/specifications
r 100 MB copied, 5.85735 s, 17.1 MB/s
w 105 MB copied, 11.8885 s, 8.8 MB/s

Integral AG47 4GB
http://www.integralmemory.com/product/ag47-usb-flash-drive
r 100 MB copied, 5.53511 s, 18.1 MB/s
w 105 MB copied, 13.9816 s, 7.5 MB/s