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The testing procedure was quite simple. We used Xbench to clock the read and write speeds of a few different thumb drives. Now, Xbench is an Apple based program, but it works incredibly well for this type of simple testing. The computer we used for testing was a Mac Mini running OS X 10.4.6 on a PPC (Power PC processor) at 1.42 Ghz. After I had quickly confiscated a few thumb drives from folks around the lab, we got down to the testing. Here's what we saw.

The OCZ Mini-Kart is dead last with abysmal random write speeds for 4kb blocks. It does manage however to beat out the Cruzer in read speeds. It was a close race between the two, but the OCZ Mini-Kart did place second last, if only by a nose. As for the 256kb read and write speeds, it's the same story. The OCZ Mini-Kart is trounced by every other drive when it comes to random read speeds. But again, the Mini-Kart did pull ahead of the SanDisk Cruizer when it came to random 256kb block writing.

The sequential times show a somewhat different story here. When writing 4kb blocks sequentially, it is a dead tie between all of the contenders. But writing in 4kb sequential blocks spells a different story. The OCZ Mini-Kart comes in second place, right in behind my very own Kingston Data Traveler II. I really like my Kingston now.

As we look at the 256kb sequential testing, the Mini-Kart is once again in last place. Though these speed tests do show vast differences between the competing products, these figure should be taken with that proverbial grain of salt as these figures translate into only seconds in the real world. It is unfortunate that the OCZ 1 GB Mini-Kart didn't perform to higher expectations, but there is suspect reason for this.

USB may be a connection standard, but not all USB devices are built the same. There are three different data transfer rates.

• Low Speed:1.5Mbit/sec (183 KiBits/sec) most often used for Human Interface Devices (HID) such as keyboards, mice and joysticks.
• Full Speed:12MBits/sec (1.4 MiB/sec) was the fastest transfer rate before the introduction of the USB2.0 standard. Full speed devices share bandwidth and can become bottle necked during high data transfer rates. Many devices will default from Hi-Speed to the lower full speed when used.
• Hi-Speed:480Mbits/sec (57 MiB/sec) is the fastest USB transfer rate. Only a few USB2.0 devices will support this transfer rate. Unfortunately, most USB Hubs only run at Full Speed rates. Therefore, a Hi-Speed device will default to the lower Full Speed standard.

It is quite likely that the OCZ uses only the Full Speed spec. This is a little disappointing, but OCZ did design this drive with portability in mind, not performance.