OCZ ATV Turbo 4GB Flash Drive Review

Oct 11 2007, 12:00am CDT | by Shane McGlaun

Today we are looking at the OCZ ATV Turbo flash drive. OCZ promises that the ATV Turbo is shock resistant, water and debris resistant and has high data read and write speeds. How well does the drive live up to the promises OCZ makes? Read on to find out all the details.

Gallery

6 images

Benchmarks

Features & Specifications
OCZ quotes read speeds of 33-55MB/sec and write speeds of 26-30MB/sec for the OCZ ATV Turbo. Storage capacity for the drive is 4GB and the rubber housing is shock and water-resistant. The drive has an orange LED light on the end that flashes and glows when connected and data is transferring. Supported operating systems include Windows and Mac OS X.

Benchmarks & Testing
To test the OCZ ATV Turbo I used two synthetic benchmarks including HD Tach and Sandra XII. HD Tach showed an average read speed of 27.9 MB/sec and an average write speed of 23.5 MB/sec. That average read speed is right in the promised times from OCZ, though the wire speed is a bit under what I expected to get.

To compare to the recently reviewed corsair Flash Survivor GT HD Tach numbers showed an average read speed of 23MB/sec with an average write speed of 20.6 MB/sec. That makes the OCZ ATV Turbo significantly faster than the Corsair Flash Survivor GT.

The next performance test up was with Sandra XII’s removable storage benchmark. Sandra gave the OCZ ATV Turbo a device index of 7740 ops/min, compared with the Corsair Flash Survivor GT’s score of 9575 ops/min. The endurance factor for the OCZ ATV Turbo was 19.70 compared to 16.4 for the Corsair drive.

The final test I preformed on the OCZ ATV Turbo was to write a large folder consisting of 944MB of photos to the ATV Turbo and then times writing the same folder from the OCZ ATV Turbo to the system hard drive. Writing the folder to the OCZ ATV Turbo took slightly more than 1-minute and 9-seconds. Reading the file from the OCZ ATV Turbo and writing it to the system hard drive to slightly under 41 seconds.

As I like to do when manufacturers claim shock and water resistance for their flash drives, I did some real world durability testing consisting of throwing the drive down onto hard tile floors as hard as I could and running the drive through a wash and dry cycle with some jeans. I ran these same tests on the Corsair Flash Survivor GT drive, which survived without issue.

I was worried when the wash cycle with the OCZ ATV Turbo ended because when I extracted the ATV Turbo from the washer the rubber cap had come off. I feared when I first say that the rubber cap simply presses onto the ATV Turbo and relies on friction to keep it on that it might come off easily. I want to note here that I pressed the rubber cap onto the USB connector firmly before I put the drive into the wash. I fully expected that the OCZ ATV Turbo would be dead after a wash cycle where the cap had come off at some point.

Very much to my surprise the drive operated flawlessly when plugged back into my computer. The data I had written to the OCZ ATV Turbo was intact and I could open the files. I could also write new files tot eh ATV Turbo with no problems. Since water and electronic devices don’t mix well, I can only surmise that the cap may have come off only at the end of the wash cycle during the spin cycle and not received a complete dunking.

After the wash cycle was complete, I recapped the OCZ ATV Turbo tightly and tossed it into the dryer on medium heat inside the pocket of a pair of jeans. After a full 60-minute cycle in the dryer was done, I dug around until I found the drive. Again, the cap had come off the OCZ ATV Turbo during the dry cycle. Again, despite the cap coming off, the drive still functioned normally. I think a wash and dry cycle are about the limits that the vast majority of our flash drives will be exposed too. While the cap didn’t stay on the drive, showing a possible issue with the OCZ ATV Turbo, the drive was still perfectly functional.

Verdict

Conclusion

Pros

Fast read and write speeds
Large 4GB storage capacity

Cons

Cap comes off easily

Verdict
The problem with the cap coming off rather easily turned out to not be that severe in my testing. However, it could be very severe over time. As long as you are careful and don’t wash your OCZ ATV Turbo you should be able o use the drive for a long time with ease. It’s one of the fastest flash drives I have tested and looks cool too.

7.0

where to buy

Buy from Amazon

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Shane McGlaun
Leading our review center, Shane knows technology inside out. His extensive experience in testing computer hardware and consumer electronics enable him to effectively qualify new products and trends. If you want us review your product, please contact Shane.
Shane can be contacted directly at shane@i4u.com.