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Verbatim has kindly sent us their new Store 'n' Go Micro 4GB USB Drive for review.

Company information: 

 

Products to Meet the Demands of Performance Computing

Since its beginning in 1969, Verbatim® has been at the forefront of the evolution in data storage technology. Today, more than 40 years later, Verbatim remains one of the most recognizable names in the data storage industry. Here is the profile of Verbatim that you can find on their website.

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Drive Features:

The specifications of the Verbatim Store 'n' Go Micro 4GB USB Drive were found at the Verbatim website.

Features

• Measures 1.2" x 0.5" x 0.08" or half the size of an SD Card
• Ultra portable USB Drive! Works with any USB 2.0/1.1 port
• Rugged design resists the elements
• Attach to key ring or cell phone for easy carrying
• Windows Vista, XP, 2000, Mac OS 9 & higher, Linux kernel 2.6 & higher
• Password feature supported on Windows only
• Enhanced for Windows® ReadyBoost™

 

What’s inside the Package?

On this page we will take a look at what the Store 'n' Go Micro Drive came shipped with and take a look at the drive itself.

Front of Package

Back Of Package

Package contents

The drive was supplied with a lanyard.

Test machine:

For this review we will be using a computer with the following configuration:

Hardware:

• Motherboard: Asus P5K Deluxe WI-FI/AP
• Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe @3.70 GHz
• Memory: 4x 2GB A-DATA PC2-6400 DDR2
• Video: ATI  2600HD Pro HDMI
• Display: Hanns·G HG-216DPO 21.6" 5ms Widescreen HDMI LCD
• Sound: SoundMAX Digital HD Audio (Onboard)
• Hard Disks: 2x 320GB – 1x 750GB Seagate SATA-II
• Operating System: Windows Vista Ultimate x64 SP1 is installed on this machine.

Installation:

We simply inserted the Store 'n' Go Micro drive into an available USB slot and Vista immediately recognized the drive and installed it and was ready to use within seconds.

Drive inserted into USB slot

  Device Manager

   

My Computer

Verbatim Store 'n' Go Micro 4GB USB Drive Properties

And another capacity report of the Verbatim Store 'n' Go Micro from Flash Memory Toolkit

Software set-up    

Windows Vista Ultimate x64 is installed on the computer along with Service Pack 1.

No drive software was required for this configuration.

We will be using the following software in this review:

• HD Tune Pro
• HD Tach
• Flash Memory Toolkit
• V-Safe 100 Security Software

The software included on the Verbatim Store 'n' Go Micro 4GB USB Drive is called the V-Safe 100 Security Application. We have included a brief look at this software below.

V-Safe 100 Security Application:

This software is quite simple to use and setup. You will setup a "zone" on the drive that can only be accessed by using your chosen password.

Installation

Privacy Zone setup

Formatting the Privacy Zone

Format successful

Accessing the Privacy Zone

Success!

Here we can log out of the Privacy Zone

On the next page we will take a look at the drive’s performance.

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Performance:  

On this page we will take a look at the drive’s performance compared to other High speed USB 2.0 Removable drives.

The Verbatim Store 'n' Go Micro 4GB USB Drive is High speed USB 2.0/USB 1.1 compatible.

For these tests, Write caching was set to Optimize for quick removal. However it is recommended to read the safe removal notes under the options.

Verbatim Store 'n' Go Micro 4GB USB Drive write caching options

HD Tach RW:

Options selected for first HD Tach test

Benchmark results

HD Tach results (8Mb zones)

• Random access = 0.6ms
• CPU utilization  = 8% +/-2%
• Average read = 30.1 MB/s
• Burst Rate = 32.8 MB/s

For comparison we have made the following table: 

The Verbatim Store 'n' Go Micro 4GB offers very fast read speeds

HD Tach Read and Write Bench tests

HD Tach Quick bench (8mb zones)

HD Tach results (8Mb zones)

• Random access = 0.6ms
• CPU utilization  = 3% +/-2%
• Average read = 31.3 MB/s
• Average write = 8.9 MB/s

HD Tach Long bench (32mb zones)

HD Tach results (32Mb zones)

• Random access = 0.6ms
• CPU utilization  = 14% +/-2%
• Average read = 31.3 MB/s
• Average write = 9.3 MB/s

HD Tach Full bench (Long bench, variable zones)

HD Tach results (Variable zones)

• Random access = 0.6ms
• CPU utilization  = 0% +/-2%
• Average read = 32.7 MB/s
• Average write = 15.8 MB/s

For the next test, we will use HD Tune Pro 3 and will conduct a reading benchmark. We would like to point out that HD Tune Pro results may differ from one system to another and results could also be operating system dependent.

HD Tune Pro 3 Benchmark

We present the table below for comparison with other recently tested flash drives.

The Verbatim Store 'n' Go Micro 4GB has the fastest reading speeds, and the lowest access times

Let’s move on to the next page where we test file reading and writing performance...

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File reading and writing Performance:

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To test the file reading and writing performance of the Verbatim Store 'n' Go Micro 4GB, we used the file benchmarking option in HD Tune Pro using various file sizes from 32KB to 512MB. The Verbatim Store 'n' Go Micro 4GB was set to “optimized for quick removal” in device manager. To understand what the file benchmarking graphs are showing, we present a short explanation. The vertical axis of the graph shows the reading and writing speed of the device in Megabytes per second, with the blue color showing reading performance and the orange color showing writing performance. The horizontal axis of the graph shows the file block size in Kbytes and, as we can see, various block sizes are used in the test. A small block size is useful for making the most of the available storage space on the device (very small files take up less space). The downside of using a small block size is that performance suffers badly when larger files need to be stored or read from the device. Using a larger block size will use up more space on the device when very small files are being stored, however, using a  larger block size will give much better performance when larger files have to be stored or read from the device.

Below are our obtained results.

32KB file size

1MB file size

4MB file size

8MB file size

64MB file size

128MB file size

256MB file size

512MB file size

Flash Memory Toolkit file benchmark

For our final file benchmark, we used Flash Memory Toolkit and ran the file benchmark.

Our result is below.

Summary

We can notice that as file size increases, the performance of the Verbatim Store 'n' Go Micro 4GB also increases. This is exactly what we would expect from this type of a device.

On the next page we will conduct some real world tests....

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Real world copy tests:

We will now conduct a few real world copy tests. These tests simulate what real people do with their drives. We will conduct both read and write tests, using one large single file and a multiple file copy of various file sizes. We should point out that this is not a scientific way of measuring performance. These timings were taken with a stop watch and, we have also found after testing flash drives on many PC configurations and operating systems that these timings have more to do with differences in operating systems and setup than they do with the flash drive itself. Because of the nature of these tests, we will not be comparing the results with other flash drives, as these results could be very inaccurate. They are presented only as a guide.

Multiple file copy writing test

For this test we copied a folder full of files from our review PC to the Verbatim Store 'n' Go Micro 4GB

Our test copy contained 4,961 files, varying in size, with a combined capacity of 663MB.

Our result is below.

Single large file writing test

For this test we used a single CD BIN file which had been copied to the Verbatim Store 'n' Go Micro 4GB.

Our test file was a 629MB BIN file

Our result is below.

Multiple file copy reading test

Before starting these tests, our review PC was rebooted to make sure the PC’s cache was cleared. We also allowed Windows Vista to idle for 10 minutes after booting to conduct the tests.

For this test, we copied the multiple files we had previously copied to the Verbatim Store 'n' Go Micro 4GB to desktop folder of our review PC.

Our result is below.

Single large file reading test

For this test, we copied the single CD BIN file we had previously copied to the Verbatim Store 'n' Go Micro 4GB to the desktop of review PC.

Our result is below.

Summary

According to our obtained results, the Verbatim Store 'n' Go Micro 4GB achieved some very good reading times, with writing times being somewhat slower.

On the Next page you will find the conclusion...

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Positive:

• Small enough to fit in the hard to reach Laptop USB slots
• Very Fast flash drive
• USB Connection for universal compatibility
• Solid one piece rugged design
• Works with Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems
• You don’t need to setup the security software if it’s not needed

Negative:

• So small you can easily lose it

Conclusion:

The Verbatim Store 'n' Go Micro 4GB Drive is very small and will fit on almost any system no matter how limited the space is near the USB port. The overall performance of this drive is very good compared to other manufacturers’ portable storage products. The one piece design is rugged enough to carry in your pocket or put on a key chain. Finally the price as tested was $18.49 USD, which makes this drive a wise choice.

To sum this drive up in one sentence… “The Verbatim Store 'n' Go Micro 4GB USB Drive is a very small and very fast USB drive, it easily fits in any confined USB slot”.

Because of the durability and small form factor of the Verbatim Store 'n' Go Micro 4GB drive; we decided to award the drive our CD Freaks “Safe Buy” award.

You may comment on this review below or in this forum thread.

Special thanks to: