Verbatim has kindly sent us their new Tuff-Clip 8GB USB
Drive for review. This drive features a rugged carabiner clip along
with a password security feature for privacy protection.

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.

Page
2

Drive Features:

---

The specifications of the Verbatim Tuff-Clip 8GB USB
Drive were
found at the Verbatim website.

Features

·        
Portable
USB drive with rugged carabiner clip for backpacks or key rings

·        
Retractable
USB Connector - No cap to lose

·        
Password
security feature for privacy protection

·        
Verbatim
Limited Lifetime Warranty

·        
Enhanced
for Windows® ReadyBoost™

·        
Compatible
with Windows 7, Vista, XP or 2000, Mac OS 9.x or higher, Linux kernel 2.6x or
higher

 

What’s inside the Package?

---

On this page we will take a look at what the Tuff-Clip
8GB USB Drive came
shipped with and take a look at the drive itself.

Front of Package

Back Of Package

Drive Closed

Drive Open

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 Tuff-Clip
8GB USB Drive into an available USB
slot and Vista Ultimate x64 immediately recognized the drive, installed it and was
ready to use within seconds.

Drive ready to use

 
Device
Manager

 
 

My Computer

Verbatim Tuff-Clip 8GB
USB Drive Properties

And another capacity
report of the Verbatim
Tuff-Clip
8GB USB Drive from Flash Memory Toolkit

Software set-up:    

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
• V-Safe 100 Security Software

The
software included on the Verbatim Tuff-Clip 8GB 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

Formatting in Progress

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.

Page 3

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 Tuff-Clip 8GB 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 Tuff-Clip 8GB USB Drive write caching options

HD Tach RW:

Options selected for first HD Tach test

Benchmark results

HD
Tach results (8Mb zones)

·        
Random
access = 0.8ms

·        
CPU
utilization  = 4% +/-2%

·        
Average
read = 31.2 MB/s

·        
Burst
Rate = 32.9 MB/s

For comparison we have made the following table: 

The Verbatim Tuff-Clip
8GB offers very fast read speeds

Options selected
for first HD Tach test

Results

HD
Tach results (Full Bench)

·        
Random
access = 0.5ms

·        
CPU
utilization  = 4% +/-2%

·        
Average
Read = 32.2 MB/s

·        
Average
Write = 10.0 MB/s

·        
Burst
Rate = 33.0 MB/s

For comparison we have made the following table: 

As we can see the Verbatim
Tuff-Clip 8GB USB Drive has an Average Write speed of 10.0 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
Tuff-Clip 8GB USB Drive has one of the fastest maximum reading speeds and a very
good burst rate

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

 

 

 

Page
4

File reading and writing performance tests:

---

To
test the file reading and writing performance of the Verbatim Tuff-Clip 8GB USB
Drive, we used the file benchmarking option in HD Tune Pro using various file
sizes from 32KB to 512MB. The Verbatim Tuff-Clip 8GB USB Drive 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 writing performance of the Verbatim
Tuff-Clip 8GB USB Drive also increases. This is exactly what we would expect
from this type of a device.

Writing and advanced benchmarks

---

For
these tests we used H2benchw. H2benchw communicates with the Verbatim Tuff-Clip
8GB USB Drive at
low level and should therefore, at least in theory be, operating system
independent. This test suite is capable of testing many aspects of a drives
performance, including simulated real world tests. We used the –a option (all
tests) which depending on the drive’s capacity and speed will take over 2 hours
to complete. We will present performance graphs where available. Other test
results will be presented in the form of tables.

Zone writing test

In
our graph above, we can see that the Verbatim Tuff-Clip 8GB USB Drive had an
average writing speed of 17.2MB/sec (see table for exact measurement).

Zone reading test

In
our graph above, we can see that the Verbatim Tuff-Clip 8GB USB Drive had an
average reading speed of 31.3MB/sec (see table for exact measurement).

H2benchw reading and writing test results and comparison
tables

Below
we can see the full reading and writing test results from H2benchw, in the form
of tables which display the results of our review drive and, comparison results
from other USB flash drives.

Repetitive and sequential read/write tests

The Verbatim
Tuff-Clip 8GB USB Drive has a very good reading performance and writing
performance has greatly improved.

Sustained transfer rate (block size: 128 sectors)

Again the Verbatim
Tuff-Clip 8GB USB Drive shows very good reading and writing performance
compared to our other test drives.

Random read/write access times

The Verbatim
Tuff-Clip 8GB USB Drive seek times are good.

H2benchw simulated application reading and writing test

In
our graph above, we can see how the Verbatim Tuff-Clip 8GB USB Drive performed
in our simulated application tests (see table for the combined index score).

We
present the following table for comparison with other USB flash drives:

Summary:

Read
speeds seem very good, write speeds a little slow but are improving on the Verbatim
Tuff-Clip 8GB USB Drive, but we don’t yet have a lot of comparable data to
compare with other flash drives.

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

 

 

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
Tuff-Clip 8GB USB Drive

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 Tuff-Clip
8GB USB Drive.

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
Tuff-Clip 8GB USB Drive 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
Tuff-Clip 8GB USB Drive to the desktop of review PC.

Our
result is below.

Summary:

According
to our obtained results, the Verbatim Tuff-Clip 8GB USB Drive achieved some
very good reading times, with writing times being somewhat slower.

---

Video test:

For
this test we simply copied a test AVI ripped from a DVD and VIDEO_TS folder to
our Verbatim
Tuff-Clip 8GB USB Drive. Next we tried playing the video files with Power DVD
to see if the drive could play back the video smoothly.

Both
video files played back fine without a skip or pause!

Video
test files

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

 Positive:

---

·        
Carabiner
clip

·        
Tuff
ABS plastic enclosure

·        
Ample
8GB capacity

·        
Very
Fast flash drive

·        
USB
Connection for universal compatibility

·        
Drive
is retractable

·        
Hidden
Blue LED activity light illuminates through the plastic slide retractor

·        
Works
with Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems

·        
You
don’t need to setup the security software if it’s not needed

·        
Plays
video clips with no skipping

Negative:

---

·        
None

Conclusion:

---

The Verbatim Tuff-Clip 8GB USB Drive did very good in all our Reading and Writing
tests.
The overall performance of this drive is very good compared to
other manufacturers’ portable storage products. The Carabiner clip is an
excellent addition, this clip works very well and keeps the drive attached to
anything it can fit over including back packs, belt loops and even your key
chain. With this drive the cover retracts "over" the USB plug-in and
gives a smaller form factor. If you ever carry one of these around in your
pocket you'll appreciate not being poked by the data end. The Blue LED activity
light is quite nice, its built in under the cover so you don't even know it has
a LED yet shines bright enough in good lighting conditions yet not overly
bright in dark lighting conditions. Finally the price as tested was $25.99
USD, which makes this drive an Excellent choice.

To sum this drive up in one sentence… “The Verbatim
Tuff-Clip 8GB USB Drive is a very Rugged and Fast retractable USB drive with a
sleek Carabiner clip”.

Because of the performance and quality of the Verbatim Tuff-Clip 8GB USB Drive; we
decided to award the drive our CD Freaks “Safe Buy” award.

Special thanks
to: