>>>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

Thanks for this info Al. Very interesting.