SanDisk Extreme PRO USB 3.0 Flash Drive Capsule Review
by Ganesh T S on November 27, 2014 7:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
- USB 3.0
- Flash Drive
- SanDisk
Performance Consistency and Concluding Remarks
Yet another interesting aspect of these types of units is performance consistency. Aspects that may influence this include thermal throttling and firmware caps on access rates to avoid overheating or other similar scenarios. This aspect is an important one, as the last thing that users want to see when copying over, say, 100 GB of data to the flash drive, is the transfer rate going to USB 2.0 speeds. In order to identify whether the drive under test suffers from this problem, we instrumented our robocopy DAS benchmark suite to record the flash drive's read and write transfer rates while the robocopy process took place in the background. For supported drives, we also recorded the internal temperature of the drive during the process. The graphs below show the speeds observed during our real-world DAS suite processing. The first three sets of writes and reads correspond to the photos suite. A small gap (for the transfer of the videos suite from the primary drive to the RAM drive) is followed by three sets for the next data set. Another small RAM-drive transfer gap is followed by three sets for the Blu-ray folder.
An important point to note here is that each of the first three blue and green areas correspond to 15.6 GB of writes and reads respectively. Throttling, if any, is apparent within the processing of the photos suite itself. We found that the Extreme PRO unit exposed the internal controller temperature to the host OS, while the Extreme didn't. That said, neither the Extreme PRO, nor the Extreme throttled under these heavy loading conditions (a total of 127 GB of writes and 127 GB of reads within a 30 minute duration).
The Extreme PRO internal temperatures do seem to rise rapidly with heavy writes (reaching as much as 75 C at the end of our test routine). However, the cooling down during the short idle period (RAM drive transfer gap) seems to be fast, indicative of good thermal design. Internally, the Extreme PRO idled around 43 C.
Concluding Remarks
Coming to the business end of the review, the Extreme and Extreme PRO USB 3.0 drives continue SanDisk's tradition of improving the performance of their USB 3.0 flash drive every generation. The performance of the drives leave us with no doubt that they have been tailored to fit the traditional flash drive use-cases. It must be made clear that the Extreme and Extreme PRO are not candidates to consider for a portable OS or Windows-To-Go drive.
Since there is no TRIM support through the SATA - USB bridge, users are advised to format them in a file system suitable for flash drives (such as exFAT). The final aspect we consider today is the cost.
While the $28 SanDisk Extreme 64 GB is a no-brainer as a stocking stuffer or impulse buy, the $138 SanDisk Extreme PRO 128 GB is a bit more difficult to recommend (considering its price per GB). The write performance of the Extreme PRO is better than the Corsair Voyager GTX for large files, but the Voyager GTX manages better performance over-all (even for typical flash drive use-cases). Obviously, the caveat here is that we tested the 256 GB variant of the Voyager GTX, while the Extreme PRO tops out at 128 GB. All said, the performance that SanDisk has managed to put in a typical flash drive form factor is impressive. We look forward to the price per GB metric of the Extreme PRO being improved and larger capacities coming to the market.
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kyuu - Saturday, November 29, 2014 - link
Don't be such a tool. AT (and most other review sites) have always relied almost entirely on manufacturers sending review samples. AT does not make enough money to purchase tens of thousands of dollars a year purchasing the items. These sites aren't run by independently wealthy millionaires.No one can deny that Anand leaving sucks, but you can hardly blame the man for taking a job that almost certainly pays much better than running this site ever did. Or do you regularly receive job offers for really great gigs and turn them down?
Ryan Smith - Saturday, November 29, 2014 - link
As always, if you have any complaints about the site or the articles, please be sure to bring it to our attention. You guys are our bread and butter, so if you see us slipping or otherwise think we could be doing something better, we'd like to know.I can be reached via email or Twitter.
-The New Boss
akdj - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
Ryan, you're a F'ing stud. You, the entire crew. Anand may have 'found' or been the genesis, but those of you there now, that have been for quite some time, and seem to have the fortitude and gumption to continue. I wish you NOTHING but the very best of luckIt takes only a tool like that (tool=such a perfect word, my apologies for the plagiarism;) to Gomer up a conversation. What said tool 'doesn't get' is
A) you do indeed get phones, tabs, motherboards and C/GPUs, NAS & DAS... & you sign an NDA for said piece typically receiving a version 'ahead' of the gen pop.
When the release happens, your NDA is clear, articles, reviews and opinions are posted.
B) your site is well respected by most technology companies in the world. I'm unable to name a better site with objective testing, data, and subjective usage details so well written and from such and extremely wide variety of gear. Other than Windows phones, but I'm not sure anyone gives a pair of poops about them anyway
Keep up the incredible work. Anand is a name. You and your crew are and have been his backbone for years. Anand, while congrats are in order, wasn't the reason the detailed plethora of reviews here exist. It's Brian and another at least ½ dozen guys and gals with so much more intelligence and experience with these units than literally ANYONE reading ...much less commenting
Human nature is ultimately going to 'end' with a subjective take or opinion
Brian's was spot on. As are his Android, Apple, motherboard and power supply reviews. Their fair and obviously 'repeatable' on your own and evidenced traditionally by sales figures
Don't like it, Go Away. This isn't the place for that horseshit, especially when you've not submitted anything to the conversation ...nor did you probably take the time to read it, and if you did, I understand the meaning of tool. You. Didn't. Get. It.
I'll explain, if it's 'TL': This 'thumb' drive is incredibly fast compared to your SanDisk or PNY 4GB stick from 2011 you picked up. By ten, maybe twenty fold. Now...WTF does that have to do with the namesake and his career?
stephenbrooks - Friday, November 28, 2014 - link
I got a 128GB PNY drive and ran into weird driver issues. Takes about 20 seconds to appear when I plug it in (after a lot of continuous HDD access). Then the transfer rate is s-l-o-w with like a 2 second delay per file. Attempting to switch on write caching in Windows broke the registry in such a way it no longer recognised the USB disk at all and I had to manually delete a load of entries. Weird and obviously disappointing.stephenbrooks - Friday, November 28, 2014 - link
This was, however, not the USB3 version:PNY Attache III 128GB Flash Drive - USB 2.0 - P-FD128ATT03-GES3
thudo - Monday, December 1, 2014 - link
USB3.1 is 10 Gbps compared to half that with by-gone era USB3.0 lest I mention the incredible power output 3.1 will have which will literally be able to recharge a laptop. Its worth the wait considering the long term benefits.akdj - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
No it's not. There's NOTHING on the market that can saturate USB 3's thoroughput @ five Gb/s. Thunderbolt 2 is 20 Gb/s and I've owned a TBolt 1 since 2012 with your '10 Gb/s' with power output not yet established (& variable with current USB amperage).That's ridiculous. Wait for an output theoretical and still in the drawing board...
...when there's nothing it will do 'better' than today's current offerings?
That's silly. Need a computer, buy a computer. By the time thudo's computer is available, cool, pop the drive --- buy said USB 3.1 housing and controller, put drive in, plug it in and BAM! Same. Speed.
Oh well. Cool thing, by then we'll be paying today's HDD prices for tomorrow's SSD storage and NAND, M.2 or PCIe SSDs. My current MBP is hitting speeds near a Gb/s writing and exceeding at about 1,070-1,100 read times. That's. Flying! And it's a TB, weighs less than 5 pounds with the charger and lasts nearly all day with the power of my 2009 Mac Pro (actually quicker!).
Check out the new mobile reviews and speeds of their internal NAND modules. They're exceeding 200Mb/s these days and it's a HUGE part of the 'user experience' when downloading, installing, updating or utilizing an app for video/photo/artistic manipulation & it's speed to swap out those mini files quickly.
I'm not sure there's a consumer modem, ISP or ANY hardware that could or would benefit from anything faster than USB 3 or thunderbolt. Not that advancement is bad. But waiting is foolish.
Bullwinkle J Moose - Saturday, November 29, 2014 - link
PNY Blows ChunksI learned my lesson
So should you
My 128GB Attache reads and writes at 1/2 the listed speed
My PNY SD Cards give me frame drops in a camcorder that only requires 1.5MB/sec write speed yet the card is listed for 10 times that speed
Bullwinkle J Moose - Saturday, November 29, 2014 - link
Sorry, I made a mistake in my post aboveThe PNY that drops frames on a camcorder that only records at 1.5MB/sec is actually listed at 30MB/sec write speed
All my old Sandisk cards listed at 15MB/sec write speed work fine with this camcorder and DO NOT drop frames
Sorry for the error
thudo - Monday, December 1, 2014 - link
Hmmm.. owned 2x these PNY 3.0 USB drives and they start at 60+mb/sec write and never ever had a single issue with them in terms of reliability and speed in any system. I even have 2 more coming as mentioned (128Gb USB3 ones for $87 all in FOR TWO!!).