Performance

We used the following devices for our comparison:

• A-Data Football Disk 512 MB
• A-Data MyFlash PD7 1 GB
• A-Data PD17 Flash Drive 1 GB
• A-Data PD18 Flash Drive 2 GB
• A-Data Pirates Flash Drive 2 GB
• A-Data RB19 Flash Drive 1 GB
• A-Data Nobility N702 Flash Drive 4 GB
• A-Data Sport S701 Flash Drive 2 GB
• A-Data Classic C701 Flash Drive 2 GB
• ATP ToughDrive Mini 2 GB
• ATP ToughDrive 2 GB
• Corsair Flash Voyager 512 MB
• Generic Stick USB 1.1 256 MB
• OCZ Mini Kart 1 GB
• OCZ Rally 1 GB
• OCZ ATV Turbo 4 GB
• OCZ Roadster 1 GB
• PQI Intelligent Drive i810 1 GB
• PQI Travelling Disk i221 1 GB
• Sandisk Cruzer Micro 2 GB
• Sandisk Cruzer Titanium 512 MB
• Super DH Series 200x 1 GB
• Super Talent RBST 1 GB
• Thermaltake MUSE external HDD enclosure
• Verbatim Store'n'Go Pro 2 GB

The A-DATA Classic C701 manages a very respectable 19.2 MB/s of raw read performance. This places the drive dead in the middle of our chart. The C701 is intended for users looking for cheap and universal storage, so we did not expect a speed demon. Still you may notice the difference of over 10 MB/s, especially if you use the 16 GB variant to store large files.


The C701 shines when it comes to access times. The drive manages 0.6 ms, which is well below the needed 1.0 ms required for Windows Vista ReadyBoost.


ATTO confirms the read speeds we obtained with HD Tach. The write speed of just above 4.4 MB/s is not fast at all. This underlines the fact once more, that this is aimed at the budget user. This speed was obtained on a nForce 680i board. Even though A-Data says ReadyBoost is not supported, there seems to be no reason why the C701 is not ReadyBoost capable. Maybe A-Data just wanted to be on the safe side with this one or differentiate the part further from the other models offered.