Customer Reviews

OCZ Diesel 4GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive (OCZUSBDSL)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I was looking for a flash drive large enough to load a bootable image onto and fast enough that it wouldn't take a year to do so without having to spend much money. After some research, I decided to go with this drive and I think it represents a good choice for an inexpensive, but reasonably fast drive. I'll give some speed comparisons in a moment. First, here are a few other impressions I thought would be worth mentioning.

1) The body of the drive feels very solidly built. It doesn't feel at all like a cheap little thing made of thin plastic housings like many flash drives I've handled.

2) Unfortunately, the little lanyard ring on the back is pretty thin and feels like it would be easy to break.

3) The plastic cap is only slightly tight on the connector and would probably fall off pretty often if you kept the drive in your pants pocket. It also won't snap onto the rear of the drive at all, so when you take it off, you have to keep track of the little, clear piece of plastic very carefully if you don't want to lose it. Then again, USB cables don't come with little caps on the connectors and you don't spend all day worrying about whether or not they're going to get dirty and stop working...

So, the above average body construction is contrasted by some poor design choices on the cap and lanyard loop, in my opinion. For me, it's not a big deal because I just keep the drive in a pocket of my laptop case, but, if you want to carry it around on you all the time, those issues may prove troublesome.

I have been pleased with the speed of the drive given the low price point. Here are benchmark results for this drive (the 4 GB OCZ Diesel) from CrystalDiskMark 2.2 with a 100 MB test size:

Sequential Read : 21.326 MB/s

Sequential Write : 5.352 MB/s

Random Read 512KB : 21.236 MB/s

Random Write 512KB : 1.772 MB/s

Random Read 4KB : 5.793 MB/s

Random Write 4KB : 0.021 MB/s

For comparison, here are the results for a freebie generic flash drive I got at a conference a while back:

Sequential Read : 12.471 MB/s

Sequential Write : 2.260 MB/s

Random Read 512KB : 12.468 MB/s

Random Write 512KB : 1.383 MB/s

Random Read 4KB : 5.467 MB/s

Random Write 4KB : 0.027 MB/s

As one last comparison, here are the results I found in an online review for the supposedly super-fast Patriot Xporter XT 4 GB drive:

Sequential Read : 30.320 MB/s

Sequential Write : 11.550 MB/s

Random Read 512KB : 30.360 MB/s

Random Write 512KB : 3.208 MB/s

Random Read 4KB : 5.888 MB/s

Random Write 4KB : 0.015 MB/s

Overall, I'm happy with this purchase. It meets my requirements of giving me markedly better performance than a run-of-the-mill generic flash drive and I spent less than ten bucks for it. If you need something more rugged or need even more speed than it offers, the Patriot drive looks to be one of the best choices out there, but it costs about twice as much money.

Inexpensive, good looking, high capacity, and fast. The body feels as if it is made of metal.

My vista machine accepts it as a readyboost drive and the speeds are noticably faster than my prior USB drive (a PNY micro).

I am sure I will lose the cap soon.

This is my second DIESEL flash drive. I'm not really sure how you could screw one of these up but they're a great brand and I will continue to buy DIESEL whenever I need a flash drive.

This is a great USB stick. It works as advertised and is attractive (half the battle with USB sticks). It's only drawback is it doesn't come with a string or clip of it's own. It does have a loop so you can attach your own though. The aluminum body has a great hand feel, and it seems quite sturdy.

This OCZ Diesel drive is built good, stylish and I couldn't tell a difference in speed from other drives. However I do not use this drive much because it flashes bright blue when its being used meaning it turns my car into a blue disco factory so no OCZ in the car. My man cave is dark...for a reason, well not with this thing going so no OCZ in the man cave. This drive is great it's just not for darkened areas unless you want to keep blocking it or make it hideous with black tape.

Mine still works honestly i forgot when i purchased it maybe 9-10 months ago only problem is the loop in the back broke so i cant put it on keychain

The main reason i chose this flash drive apart from countless others was price.

This happened to be the cheapest 4gb flash drive i could find so i tried it out and actually got two. They work like a flash drive should, no excessive waiting time and about half the size (not capacity) of the typical sandisk u3 flash drives, which was surprising. Plus I liked the look to this flash drive especially.

Basically just a good flash drive.

its a flash drive that works as it should. Read/write times are as stated. Would buy again.

The OCZ 4GB USB flash drive is a compact, fast USB FD with a metal skin & a bright blue LED. Only Con is the clear plastic top which can be lost easily & the hoop for a strap looks rather fragile. Overall it work great for transfering data to my New HDD on my Playstation 3.

I bought it from Amazon last month and its working fine so far.

one structure problem I see is its very easy to loose its cap as it does not fit at rear side when its plugged in computer.

but this look cute.