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Testing

To measure for performance we used the USB test in Sisoft's Sandra benchmarking tool. The program gives weight to a score that is realistically worthless for the applications we would be finding ourselves using the rally drive for. What it does show though is the average read speed of the drive. This figure gives a good idea of how long it will take to move files between drives. We used HD Tach to get an alternate reading of the drives read and write performance.

The Rally's performance in Sandra is actually quite astounding. An average read speed of 28 MB's per second is extremely quick and outdoes anything else on the market today. Sandra revealed an extremely slow write speed for the Rally. Almost two times slower than what OCZ rates the drive for.

The Rally's score in HD tach is slightly less amazing, yet still thoroughly quick. We would be more inclined to say that a 28 MB per second burst speed is more accurate than a 28 MB per second average read speed, but it's average speed of 27 is still awesome.

The poor write speed revealed in Sandra is suspicious, and we would say that it is inaccurate as we have been using (just nearly relying on) the Rally for the past two weeks and have been amazed at how quickly it moves massive chunks of files. This drive is fast, and an artificial benchmark can tell you one thing, but real world performance is what matters.

We hucked across the 461 MB Starship Troopers demo file in 42 seconds, which works out to 11 MB per second. Not 14, but close enough to still be considered fast.