OCZ Mega-Kart 8GB Flash Drive

Examination:

The OCZ Mega-Kart is still a slim device but not nearly as small as the Mini-Kart. At 84 x 53 mm, the 8GB device is roughly the same size as a credit card and is composed of plastic. OCZ Technology advertises the Mega-Kart as being able to fit in a wallet, and this statement is indeed true. Printed on one side of the flash device are OCZ's logo and the Mega-Kart moniker along with printing the storage capacity, while the opposing side remains bare. The USB connector is built into the flash drive and is able to pop out when pushing on one of the sides; the USB cable is a few centimeters long. On the side of the drive is a LED for indicating the drive status. Unlike some USB flash drives that are waterproof, the Mega-Kart is not.

Performance:

Prior to sharing our results, it is important to note that the 8GB Mega-Kart is not engineered to yield fast file transfers. OCZ prides this product upon the storage capacity and not the read/write speeds. With that said, we had compared the Mega-Kart against the Corsair Flash Voayger 512MB and Seagate PocketDrive 5.0GB. The Seagate PocketDrive is a small 3600RPM hard drive and is not flash memory based. We had performed hdparm read tests with Fedora Core 6 using the 2.6.18-1.2798.fc6 kernel. We had used a Lenovo ThinkPad T60 laptop with an Intel Core Duo T2400 dual-core processor, 1GB of DDR2, and 80GB SATA hard drive. Using hdparm -t /dev/sdb, the average buffered disk read speed was 21.71 MB/s. The Seagate PocketDrive had an average read speed of 5.08 MB/s while the speed for the Corsair Flash Voyager 512MB was 19.21 MB/s. The write speeds, however, were much slower but still efficient when transferring large files. The transfer speeds were actually much higher than we had anticipated, after we were told by OCZ not to expect the Mega-Kart to be a Speedy Gonzalez.

Conclusion:

During the short time thus far that OCZ Technology has been manufacturing USB flash drives they have introduced several successful products. The OCZ Mini-Kart is the smallest flash drive that we have seen to date while the OCZ Rally is the fastest flash drive. Today with the OCZ Mega-Kart, this is one of the first economically priced 8GB flash drives. Complying with the size of a credit card, the OCZ Mega-Kart 8GB can easily fit into a wallet. While OCZ had warned us about the transfer speeds of the device, we were actually surprised by the speeds. The write speeds were slightly slower than the read, but still was quick when we had transferred several Linux ISOs to the USB 2.0 device. At the time of writing the OCZ Mega-Kart 8GB is selling for approximately $140 USD, which really isn't that bad of a deal. One area where the Mega-Kart has room to improve would be with the USB connection. The USB cable is short, which can be a bit of a hassle when connecting the device if adjacent USB ports on the computer are filled. Overall, we were fairly impressed by this flash memory product.