>>Hi All,
>>
>>I'm looking at this USB flash memory card (apparently the thinnest in the world). On their spec sheet they state a read speed of 8MB/s over USB 2. How would that compare with an average PC drive these days?
>>
>>http://www.freecom.com/ecproduct_detail.asp?ID=2644&CatID=8080&sCatID=80804&ssCatID=80804
>
>Serial ATA II (3.0Gbps)

Nah - the underlying speed of the drive is much lower than that: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/VirtualMachinesAndExternalHardDriveThroughput.aspx

Typical 7200 rpm drives can't sustain more than 65MB/sec (optimum), no matter the speed of the external interface. But that's still a lot faster than typical flash drives.

The high numbers you see for SATAII (and other interfaces, for that matter) are maximum theoretical burst rates to or from the drive's internal buffer. The other day I bought some Seagate 320GB SATAII hard drives, which have a 16MB buffer (which is 128 million bits). So, under absolute optimum conditions that drive can sustain 3.0Gbps (3,000 megabits per second) transfer rates for a maximum of

128 / 3000 = 0.043 seconds