OCZ ATV Turbo 4GB Flash Drive Review

Looks & Build Quality

USB Duplicators by Nexcopy If OCZ is trying to catch your eye, they have certainly done it. The ATV Turbo is encased in durable rubber, with black treads along each side. The rubber that they have used to seal the drive feels much like that used for tires and seals the drive entirely, minus the USB connection.

The OCZ ATV Turbo is about average in size for a flash drive. I say average loosely as there isn't a standard that is set for their size, but in my experience most flash drives are about 3 inches long. In the picture below you can see the actual size compared to the Corsair Padlock, OCZ VBoost, and a pack of bubble gum.

Possibly one of the best ideas that I have seen for a while with a flash drive has to be the convenient cap holder that comes attached to the ATV Turbo via a dog tag style chain. The cap holder is made of the same material that the flash drive is encased in and has a very snug fit with the cap to ensure that it doesn't go anywhere. Unfortunately the chain that holds it comes apart easily and as such I almost lost the cap holder twice. This wasn't from abuse or misuse, just simply the drive being in my pocket. Luckily I was able to find the cap holder each time, and after the second time I used a pair of pliers to make sure the chain didn't come undone anymore.

Size compared to other drives and a pack of gum; cap holder on the right.

The ATV Turbo is said to be extremely fast and featured Dual Channel memory technology to make it so. OCZ boasts some pretty big numbers for transfer speeds. In fact, they claim that it has "the fastest speeds on the market." The 33-35 MB/s and 26-30 MB/s they claim certainly aren't something to laugh at and are higher than the numbers than our king of the hill Corsair Flash Survivor GT was able to pull, but I made sure to run it through the gauntlet of Sandra, HD Tach, and Robocopy to see if it holds up to the claims, or if it is all just a bunch of PR hype and mumbo-jumbo.

First off is SiSoft Sandra's removable media benchmark. Read and write results were both best under the 64MB files test, with a blistering 32.8 MB/s and 27.3MB/s respectively. Write speeds decreased noticeably as smaller files were copied to the drive, but read speeds remained strong until it reached the 32kB and smaller files.

SiSoftware Sandra Benchmark

HD Tach
The ATV Turbo flash drive continued to show strong numbers in the HD Tach RW benchmark, both with read and write speeds. Read speeds averaged out to 31.6 MB/s which, with a burst read speed of 33.6 MB/s, right where OCZ says it should be. What is impressive is the 30.1 MB/s write speed that is actually just slightly above the 26-30 MB/s claimed. Random access time was very quick at .7ms and CPU utilization was 6%.

According to HD Tach, both read & write speeds of OCZ 4GB drive are amazingly close.

Real World File Copy
Utilizing Robocopy, I created a 1GB set of RAR files (50MBx20) to copy files to the drive and then back to a RAID 0 array to test real world read and write speeds. All I could say was, "WOW!" as I watched the files copy with some very impressive speed. The read speeds continued to stay right in OCZ's specs at 33.23 MB/s but the write speed actually blew away their claimed 30MB/s reaching a whopping 31.65 MB/s! If you are looking for speed out of your flash drive, then the OCZ ATV Turbo drive is where it's at.

Ruggedized You Say?
Other than speed the ATV Turbo touts its ruggedness as a feature and their website states that the "rubber tread housing, which is a 100% weatherproof and shock-proof storage solution to keep digital files safe in any conditions, even fully submerged in water." I love it when manufacturer's make these claims as it always ads some fun to the testing to see what you can do to foil their plans.

I dropped the flash drive several times and due to the rubber exterior of the drive, all it did was bounce. Not being satisfied, I decided to take it to the extreme. In fits of anger I have been known to throw things as my plaster wall during intense gaming sessions, so I decided to see how the ATV Turbo would fair against my plaster walls. It ricocheted off the walls just like a rubber bouncy ball. For the record, my Logitech MX700 failed this test, as did my Bluetooth headset and one of my cell phones. Plugging the drive back in showed all my data was still 100% intact and the drive showed no signs of physical abuse.

The Flashsicle, now in banana flavor!So it passed the shock resistance test, what about the waterproof test? I really was hoping to have the pleasure of intentionally washing and drying the drive in my pants pocket. Who hasn't done this by accident and lost some data? Well before I got the chance to do it intentionally, I did it by accident. You'd be surprised how much fun is lost by doing it unintentionally. After finding it fully dried, I figured this would be a great time to finish my testing so I filled a plastic cup with enough water to fully submerge the drive and threw it in the freezer to see how it would fair and then left to run some errands. About six hours later I returned home to my newly formed flashsicle and took it out of the cup.

Boil, boil, toil, and trouble

Now I couldn't very well plug a block of ice into my USB port so I had to melt the ice off of the drive. I boiled a pot of water and while I was waiting for the water to heat up, I melted the ice off of the connector to see if it had penetrated the cap. Water had in fact gotten inside the cap and the connector was filled with ice. However it did not appear damaged so when the water came to a boil, I threw the half frozen drive in the pot. After that I set the timer for 5 minutes and came back when it was fully cooked. In fact I think it liked the bath as it got the pocket lint from my pants off the drive and looked brand new. Everything looked fine so I decided to dry it off.

By dry it off I mean decided to throw it in the oven. While the water was boiling I heated the oven up to 200 degrees Fahrenheit. This time around I threw the drive on a baking sheet for 10 minutes and came back when it was done. I expected there to be some deformation since the drive is encased in rubber, but there wasn't any. Everything looked good so I placed the drive in front of a fan for twenty minutes to make sure the USB connector was fully dried.

An ATV casserole for dinner

I pondered running the drive over with my car, but after seeing how the Corsair Flash Voyager GT fared, I figured that was a bit too rugged for this drive seeing as it is made of what appears to be the same material.

Now somewhere along the line I expected something to have gone wrong. The washing and drying ruining the drive, the pressure of ice expanding to break the PCB the memory is on, water to still be in the drive when plugging it in and shorting it out, or the heat in the oven to possibly melt some solder somewhere and just plain causing the drive not to work. This wasn't the case and as I plugged the drive in, it popped up and all my data was still in perfect condition.

Recap
I beat it, froze it, boiled it, washed it, and baked it and after everything was said and done the drive still was able to take the crown from the Corsair Flash Survivor as the king of speed. If it's space you are looking for the ATV Turbo will cater to your needs in a 4GB or 8GB version and if its durability you are after, it will survive all but the most devastating of tragedies. The convenient cap holder just sets it over the top as simply one of the best drives available.

It should be noted that there are two different versions of the ATV drive offered by OCZ, the ATV and the ATV Turbo. The difference between them is simply the write speeds and the color of the drive. The ATV Turbo boasts write speeds double that of the standard ATV but comes at a big cost. While Shopper.com shows the 4GB ATV drive going for just over $45, the Turbo version is going to cost you almost double that at $82. If you are looking for durability then you may want to look at the sans Turbo model, but if you want the performance boost you are simply going to have to pay for it.