July 17, 2015 at 14:36[Testing] Kingston Type-C USB Drive - DataTraveler microDuo 3C - 32 gigabyte
Hello Giktayms! USB Type-C, which was already described in detail on the GT, has not yet become the most common, but manufacturers are starting to build the infrastructure. More recently, the Kingston microDuo 3C flash drive was presented at the Computex 2015 exhibition and it was time to evaluate its real characteristics and performance. Under the cut, more details about one of the first USB 3.1 Type-C drives .
I'll start with the price. Yandex.Market says that you can purchase such a drive a little more than one thousand rubles. The price starts from 1009 rubles . If we draw analogies with the "classic" flash drives, it is easy to understand that microDuo 3C will be more expensive than conventional 2.0 drives and lower in price than high-speed 3.0 devices.
Traditionally a few words about packaging. Transparent plastic blister, absolutely standard form of delivery of USB drives. Inside, in addition to the flash drive itself, there is also a small strap for fixing on a key ring or keychain.
Flash drives with two interfaces are not new, Kingston has options with microUSB, both with support for USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 . Now it’s the turn of the new - USB 3.1 Type C - interface.
Positioning the USB Type C standard itself involves using drives with mobile devices and transferring data to conventional computers. The new Apple MacBooks have not yet received wide distribution, many manufacturers are in no hurry to release updated devices (although there are already devices from both Google and Nokia).
The following specifications are announced for Kingston microDuo 3C:
For testing, I had to specially sort out the stand, which is now slightly different from the one I usually use. The fact is that the new interface has not yet received proper distribution, and the only affordable motherboard in Russia was MSI Z97A Gaming 6 . The ASMedia ASM1142 controller is soldered on it, which provides support for the USB 3.1 Gen 2 interface (up to 10 Gb / s)
The actual disk capacity is 31,466,323,968 bytes, which, when recalculated, gives about 29.3 gigabytes. The drive uses Toshiba TLC memory and the Phison PS2307 controller, which is used in many USB flash drives that Kingston makes.
You can connect a USB flash drive on either side, because the USB Type C connector is balanced. The drive sits very tightly in the connector; it requires a little effort to remove it.
A synthetic test to assess the correctness of the manufacturer's stated speeds. Actually, most of the data indicated on the boxes of flash drives and SSDs of different manufacturers was obtained using ATTO Disk Benchmark.
This test allows you to evaluate the operation of the drive in four modes: linear read / write, read / write blocks in 4K, linear read / write at a queue depth of 32 teams, read / write blocks in 4K at a queue depth of 32 teams.
To evaluate the most real performance, I recorded the film The Hobbit on a BDRemux flash drive. Battle Of Five Armies (file size 28 851 025 kilobytes) and fixed the time during which the movie is copied to the drive.
The first swallow turned out to be quite fast and beautiful. The flash drive did not become an ultra-expensive solution for the segment of selected MacBook owners, in a very compact case it turned out to combine two large connectors with support for a fairly high reading speed. The metal case, like previous models with two interfaces, increases the reliability and security of the drive.
The only unpleasant moment is the recording speed, it is low, but you need to take into account the dimensions of the device again, a faster controller would simply overheat with such a case.
Thanks for watching, stay with Kingston at Geektimes.ru!
I'll start with the price. Yandex.Market says that you can purchase such a drive a little more than one thousand rubles. The price starts from 1009 rubles . If we draw analogies with the "classic" flash drives, it is easy to understand that microDuo 3C will be more expensive than conventional 2.0 drives and lower in price than high-speed 3.0 devices.
Traditionally a few words about packaging. Transparent plastic blister, absolutely standard form of delivery of USB drives. Inside, in addition to the flash drive itself, there is also a small strap for fixing on a key ring or keychain.
Flash drives with two interfaces are not new, Kingston has options with microUSB, both with support for USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 . Now it’s the turn of the new - USB 3.1 Type C - interface.
Positioning the USB Type C standard itself involves using drives with mobile devices and transferring data to conventional computers. The new Apple MacBooks have not yet received wide distribution, many manufacturers are in no hurry to release updated devices (although there are already devices from both Google and Nokia).
The following specifications are announced for Kingston microDuo 3C:
- Drive capacity: 16, 32 or 64 gigabytes
- Standards Support: USB 2.0, 3.0, 3.1
- Read speed: up to 100 MB / s
- Write speed: up to 10 MB / s (for 16 GB), up to 15 MB / s (for 32 and 64 GB)
- Warranty period: 5 years
For testing, I had to specially sort out the stand, which is now slightly different from the one I usually use. The fact is that the new interface has not yet received proper distribution, and the only affordable motherboard in Russia was MSI Z97A Gaming 6 . The ASMedia ASM1142 controller is soldered on it, which provides support for the USB 3.1 Gen 2 interface (up to 10 Gb / s)
Test stand
- Processor: Intel Core i7-4790S
- Motherboard: MSi Z97A Gaming6
- RAM: Kingston HyperX Predator DDR3-2800 2 * 4 Gb
- System SSD: HyperX Predator PCI-E SSD 480 Gb
- Video card: ASUS Radeon R9 290X Matrix
- Power Supply: Corsair AX1200i, 1200W
- Operating System: Windows 8.1 Professional (64-bit)
The actual disk capacity is 31,466,323,968 bytes, which, when recalculated, gives about 29.3 gigabytes. The drive uses Toshiba TLC memory and the Phison PS2307 controller, which is used in many USB flash drives that Kingston makes.
You can connect a USB flash drive on either side, because the USB Type C connector is balanced. The drive sits very tightly in the connector; it requires a little effort to remove it.
A set of test applications:
- ATTO disk benchmark 2.4.7
- Crystal Disk Mark 4.0.3
- Teracopy
ATTO disk benchmark 2.4.7
A synthetic test to assess the correctness of the manufacturer's stated speeds. Actually, most of the data indicated on the boxes of flash drives and SSDs of different manufacturers was obtained using ATTO Disk Benchmark.
Crystal Disk Mark 4.0.3
This test allows you to evaluate the operation of the drive in four modes: linear read / write, read / write blocks in 4K, linear read / write at a queue depth of 32 teams, read / write blocks in 4K at a queue depth of 32 teams.
Teracopy
To evaluate the most real performance, I recorded the film The Hobbit on a BDRemux flash drive. Battle Of Five Armies (file size 28 851 025 kilobytes) and fixed the time during which the movie is copied to the drive.
Final thoughts
The first swallow turned out to be quite fast and beautiful. The flash drive did not become an ultra-expensive solution for the segment of selected MacBook owners, in a very compact case it turned out to combine two large connectors with support for a fairly high reading speed. The metal case, like previous models with two interfaces, increases the reliability and security of the drive.
The only unpleasant moment is the recording speed, it is low, but you need to take into account the dimensions of the device again, a faster controller would simply overheat with such a case.
MicroDuo 3C video
Thanks for watching, stay with Kingston at Geektimes.ru!
