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Rugged 32GB OCZ ATV Flash Drives

With consumers needing more space the 32GB flash drives are a perfect solution for those that always seem to be low on mobile storage space. With this much data on a flash drive it only makes sense to protect it the best you can and for that OCZ designed the ATV family of flash drives as a ruggedized storage solutions for professionals, students, and gamers on the go. They are built to handle whatever rough terrain you encounter. The shock-proof ATV series of flash drives have been around for nearly a year, but only recently has a 32GB version been available and that is what we are looking at today.

The ATV flash drives features a durable and colorful black and blue rubber 'tread' housing, which is a 100% weatherproof storage solution to keep digital files safe in any conditions, even fully submerged or frozen in water. The rubber housing has a nice 'grippy' feel to it and the only downside to it is that dirt and dust like to stick to it. The 32GB OCZ ATV flash drive isn't going to slip out of your hand in a normal situation! The picture above also shows the oval LED activity indicator to the left of the 'ATV' that glows orange when the drive is plugged in and flashes during data transfer.

With the flash drive flipped over, the only difference is the branding on the side, which has the OCZ website listed instead of the product name.

The OCZ ATV flash drive has a cap holder attached to the chain that helps prevent misplacement of the protective USB key cover. The cap simply pushes onto the cap holder when the drive is plugged into a PC or laptop as seen above. A capless design would have been nice, but to each their own. The chain can quickly and easily be fastened to your key ring for better portability.

The business side of the 32GB OCZ ATV flash drive gives you a better look at the USB connector that is usually hidden by the protective cap. The above image also shows how thick the rubber 'tread' housing is. We've used the 32GB OCZ ATV flash drive for a number of months now and as you can tell from the above images we have yet to even scuff or scratch the rubber housing. OCZ claims that the ATV series of flash drives are ruggedized and able to handle abuse and we have confirmed that and then some. If the 32GB OCZ ATV flash drive ever fails, you can sleep easy knowing that it carries an industry leading lifetime warranty, which is rare for flash drives.

Performance Testings and Conclusions

An ASUS S62J 'white box' notebook with a Core Duo T2500 processor was used for testing. The Removable Storage test found in SiSoft Sandra XII was used to get read and write performance numbers.

To test the speed on the 32GB OCZ ATV USB 2.0 Flash Drive we rounded up some of the various USB keys we use in the lab and ended up with six common models that would be interesting to compare to each other. Each of the drives were then formatted and benchmarked with SiSoftware Sandra XII SP1 on an ASUS S62J notebook. All of the drives were plugged into the same USB port and the system was restarted before each set of tests.

The removable storage benchmark in Sandra XII SP1 showed that not all flash drives are created equal. The PNY Attache 2GB drive was by far the slowest with 'Write' speeds that were just 2.74MB/Sec and 'Read' speeds of 13.44MB/Sec. The OCZ Rally2 lead the group with impressive Write speeds of 7.10MB/Sec and the Kingston DataTraveler 400 was the speed champ in the Read test with 28.03MB/Sec. How did the 32GB OCZ ATV flash drive do? It placed second in the Read test and third in the Write test out of the seven USB flash drives we tested. Impressive results for a 32GB drive, but this is just the 256kB file test!

The 64MB file test showed improved performance and the 32GB OCZ ATV USB 2.0 Flash Drive flirted with 30MB/Sec on the Read test and was nearly 12MB/Sec on the Write test. The 32GB OCZ ATV is one fast thumb drive!