Customer Reviews

Patriot Xporter XT Boost 32 GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive PEF32GUSB

5 star:		(278)
4 star:		(68)
3 star:		(19)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

Bottom line: The Patriot Xporter XT Boost 16 GB is a good USB drive but far below the performance I expected. Its tests average slightly below a Class 8 flash drive or 50X.

I will update my review on the cap status in the future since most rubber caps loosen with age and this one is a pocket gripper. I may epoxy a little leash on it to the body.

Reading so many of these reviews does not help in purchase decisions. Frankly, they drive me nuts. "It was so fast!" "It was so much faster than my old drive!" "Some people are too scientific." "It booted immediately on my Windows... (version)/Mac [computer]." (Please do not take any of these comments as personal attacks on your reviews. I have been hammered in past professional writing to ensure I provide hard, substantive data for any statement I make.)

Can I please have objective data to assist in my purchase decision? The first thing I do is benchmark when I receive a flash drive or flash card. I have returned fakes, counterfeits, and below spec units. Formatting new drives appropriately upon receipt is a smart decision, since it removes any crapware from the manufacturer and any viruses a disgruntled employee could have placed. (Does anyone remember the WordPerfect employee who knew he was going to be fired back around 1990?) Although not a Mac user. I use flash drives for Windows Vista/7 and Linux OS purposes.

Flash "class" is based on write speed. I have included a conversion table toward the end of my review. I am sorry I forgot to specify sequential write testing for my benchmarks. To increase accuracy and reduce extraneous hardware reductions in test results, I do not use USB extension cables and clean format the flash for each test. Here are some hard data for you on the 16 GB Patriot XT Boost I received from Amazon:

Flash Drive/Card Tester 1.16.1
Patriot Memory, PMAP, PMAP 1234; 15271 MB
00:01:30.99 - -------------------------------- New test process started --------------------------------
00:01:31.03 - Started "Writing test data" for drive F: 15271MB, ", Patriot Memory, PMAP, PMAP1234", 512b
00:41:11.94 - Completed "Writing test data" for drive F: 15271MB, ", Patriot Memory, PMAP, PMAP1234", 512b
00:41:11.94 - Tested total 15271.999MB in 0:39:40 with 6.424MB/s (**Class 6**)
00:41:11.94 - Total write errors: Fatal=0, Recoverable=0
00:41:11.95 - Started "Reading and comparing data" for drive F: 15271MB, ", Patriot Memory, PMAP, PMAP1234", 512b
00:52:27.89 - Completed "Reading and comparing data" for drive F: 15271MB, ", Patriot Memory, PMAP, PMAP1234", 512b
00:52:27.91 - Tested total 15271.999MB in 0:11:15 with 22.608 MB/s
00:52:27.91 - Total errors: Read fatal=0, Read recoverable=0; Write fatal=0, Write recoverable=0; Comparsion=0

H2testw Results
Warning: Only 15255 of 15256 MByte tested.
Test finished without errors.
You can now delete the test files *.h2w or verify them again.
Writing speed: 8.01 MByte/s (**Class 8**)
Reading speed: 24.5 MByte/s
H2testw v1.4

Checkflash 1.16.1
Four sector errors in last block of flash, 2nd Pass: No errors (I did a second pass since the first showed physical errors and it could have been caused by factors outside of the flash, which it was.)
1 Cycle Test, 1:25:44 elapsed
Read: 26.92, 25.50 MB/s
Write: 8.15, 8.12 MB/s (**Class 8**)

Conversion Chart
Class 2 - 16Mbps - 2MBps - 13X
Class 4 - 32Mbps - 4MBps - 27X
Class 6 - 48Mbps - 6MBps - 40X
Class 8 - 64Mbps - 8MBps - 53X
Class 10 - 80Mbps - 10MBps - 67X

Thank you for reading my review. I hope it helps you. Please approve or disapprove so I know if I should continue writing and submitting results from this several hour process for future drive or card purchases.

I recently purchased the 32 GB Patriot thumb drive and have been very happy with it. I work in video animation and web design and have found the drive to be very fast - even with large size file loads or loads with a large number of files. I've read some other complaints about the load speed of the drive but haven't noticed them myself. Perhaps the people complaining about the load speed weren't using a USB 2.0 port or they were simply being overly scientific about it.

Upon opening the drive from its packaging I inserted it into my USB drive right away and both my Vista machine and my Windows XP machine recognized it immediately. There was no formatting or configuration required. I'm not sure how it would react to a Mac.

My biggest concern with a drive like this is losing the cap. For example, if you put the drive on your keychain and stick it in your pocket the cap will eventually come off of the drive in your pocket, or while you take your keychain out of your pocket, or while the drive hangs from your vehicle's ignition. It's also common, at least for me, to forget where I put the caps. In consideration of a potential future lost cap I emailed the manufacturer's customer service department and asked them for extra caps and I received 2 additional caps about two weeks later free of charge. To me, that's customer service.

Overall the drive seems reasonably rugged. It's encased in rubber so I suspect that's what the manufacturer was going for. I'll modify this post if the drive ever craps out on me but for now I'm very satisfied with it - especially when compared to other thumb drives I've owned.

I bought this to help back up photos on trips. Works great. Relatively fast and was pleased with the transfer speed. I like the rubber housing.

Pros: Fast. Reliable. Small. Lightweight. Rubber housing semi-weather proof and feels fairly durable.

Cons: Only one small complaint. It would be nice if the cap was attached by a small rubber strip to keep the unit together as one piece. Otherwise you have to slide it on the back of the drive or set it aside which is easy to loose if you don't pay atttention.

I bought this in August of 2008 to back up a lot of my data. I used it for about 4 months ejecting it properly and not exposing it to any extreme temperatures or anything. The light still came on, but no storage was there. I tried on multiple computers(Mac, Pc, Linux) and the most that happens is the drive is recognized, but the storage is not. Called Patriot support and they would rma it if I had the original packaging. It comes in one of those plastic packages you have to cut open and destroy to get to it. After some back and forth they agreed to rma it. I am still weary of the replacement I received just because the first one went bad only a few months after getting it.

Pros
-When it did work it transferred very quickly
-Rubber casing makes it seem like it is pretty durable and can stand being on a keychain or in a pocket without issue

Cons
- Stopped working after a few months
- Patriot wanted the original package to rma it, but the original package is ripped and destroyed when trying to open it.

EDIT - Raised to 3 stars because the replacement has been working fine for almost two years now. First one that I received was just a bad one and dealing with Patriot was a hassle because requesting the original packing for a bubble package was ridiculous.

I own a few of these, I find I need alot of portable space but I dont want to carry around an ext HDD. The drive is soooooo fast. Before this I owned a corsair voyager 16gb which was just way way too slow, this drive reminds me of my old lexar lightning. Well worth the price.

I needed a flash drive bigger than the 1 GB I had, so I read a lot of reviews to see what would work well. I can't recall the brand names, but I read that a few of them have weird extra software on the flash drive that can be annoying and was not interested in having complications. I also checked Newegg and the reviews there, as well as here, were very good.

I am very pleased with this item---it transfers quickly and is easy to reformat whenever you need to. 8 GB is also a nice sized flash drive for getting slightly larger files, like movies, back and forth between friends or whatnot.

I know that storage is getting bigger and cheaper all the time, but I am happy with this one. I think it will be holding up fine for a long time to come.

Mac OSX/Windows Compatibility tip: If you are a Mac user, but want to be able to share stuff with Windows users, go to your Disk Utility, find this drive, and go to the "Partition" tab. Pick to have 1 Partition, click the "Options" button, and choose "Master Partition." After that, be sure to select the type of formatting to be "FAT" (default is Mac OSX Journaled, I believe) This will allow it to be compatible with both Mac and PC for sharing files between the two.

The Patriot XT flash drives are the best for speed and reliability. I move tons of data (documents, graphics and photos) to my flash drives, and after I make changes to some of the data, I copy to the flash drive again (replace existing folder), several times a day moving multiple gigs of data (obviously hard on the drive, but I don't know a better way to save my work. And, really I care much more about saving work that I put thousands of hours into, than I care about a flash drive. I can always buy a new drive, but I can't get my work (data) back if it is lost.

I know that my use is hard on the drives and I have killed many flash. So, to be careful, I back up onto several flash drives, plus a Maxtor External hard drive. I have tried many different brands and Patriot XT drives (XT Boost and XT Rage) are by far the best. Remember, I have killed many flash drives, but I have never had any problems with any Patriot drives. Also, I have never had a problem with any PNY drives.

But the Patriot XT drives are MUCH FASTER, so I am gradually switching to only Patriot drives.

The other fact you should know about speed is that the smaller drives are faster, I just tested a Patriot XT Boost 4GB, Patriot XT Boost 8GB, Patriot XT Boost 16GB, Patriot XT Rage 16 GB along with a PNY 8GB and a PNY 16 GB by moving 3GB (one folder containing thousands of documents) of data onto each drive. The Patriot drives are all much faster than the PNY drives, and the Patriot XT Rage is faster than the Patriot XT Boost, but within each brand the smaller drive consistently beat the larger ones in speed. So save your money and buy the smallest drive that will meet your needs. When you grow out of the drive, there will be new ones on the market that will be better and less expensive.

Bottom line: I am buying more Patriot XT flash drives.

I just got my Patriot 32GB "XT" Flash Drive today, and man am I impressed, like WOW! This thing ROCKS! I had about 16GB of data to write to the drive this afternoon, that would be 12 <1GB Apple iPhone and AppleTV MKV and MP4 movies, movies that I custom make for small HD content on a PowerMac G5, with MacTheRipper, DVD2OneX2.4.x, and HandBrake 0.9.1 and/or ElGato's Turbo H.264 video encoder tool.

I make the movies for my iPhone 3G, and AppleTV speaks for itself I hope, but these movies are specifically light/small in terms of content GB's, whereas a normal DVD movie can be anywhere from 4GB to 8GB in size, and the movies are reduced content-wise to be very small, mostly less than 1GB in size, virtually all of them I wrote to Patriot today.

I have been using the movies in my new 12.1" LED backlit LCD-screen equipped notebook/netbook, an Asus 1201N which has a very nice 1368 x 768 HD display, true 720P/1080P video real estate in a very small form-factor notebook/netbook. I simply light up the computer's built-in ArcSoft Total Media Theatre 3 software player, and it can upscale the video to HD *live*, ie directly from my USB flash drive, and BAM!! I am watching an HD movie full screen, just as quickly as you can say "1080P"!!

THAT is what I was copying the movies to the Patriot XT Flash Drive for, and this was its first assignment for me...did it pass with flying colors! Where it would have normally taken many, many minutes (probably close to an hour or more) to copy all those 12 movies to a "normal" flash drive, it only took about 23 minutes with the Patriot XT. I was pretty stunned that it took so little time, so I put the drive to the test with HD Tune Pro's read and write tests, and if you can see my graphics clearly it's pretty obvious that this flash drive is a superior device to other flash drives.

If you can see the first graphic it's the read speed and access time, plus "burst speed" of the drive, and it's astonishing for a flash drive: basically it rocked the test to the tune of about 28MB/second+ (twenty-eight MegaBytes per second!!)! I have never had a flash drive do that well on any HD Tune Pro read test like that, so then I had the utility test the Read and Write speed of the flash drive with a 64MB test sample, and BAM! It knocked out a similar performance, ie in the 2nd graphic I submitted you should be able to clearly see how it performed" 12-15MB/sec write speed, and again, just less than 30MB/sec read speed with a 64MB test sample. Incredible speed!

I don't care *how* this thing looks, ugly, pretty, semi-tough, whatever you know? With those speeds! I think it's marvelous, don't you? Patriot XT is by far the fastest USB 2.0 flash drive I've EVER tested or used, it's just phenomenally fast, if words can convey what my feelings about this performance are. They can hardly describe my shock at such speeds, from a USB flash drive no less, right here in my new Asus 1201N! INCREDIBLE!

I don't really have much else left to say or write at this time, as I think those graphics speak for themselves, and for the Patriot XT, it's pretty much "Game Over"!! Patriot XT wins! LifeTime Warranty, right? Can't argue with that--guaranteed for life! Seems to be made like a brick shirthouse, no less, with heavy-duty rubber waterproof covering, probably pretty much shock-proof also it seems...I like the lanyard extra that comes with it, too! The cap might get lost, but so what? Who cares? Be careful with it, I guess...what else can one say with write and read speeds like that?

I give this little monster Wavey Davey's 5-Star Performance Benchmark Award! Patriot XT Wins the prize, the trophy, the race, and certainly the match! If somebody else makes anything like this I'd like to know what it is, but right now in February, 2010, the Patriot XT Flash Drive is the world's absolute fastest USB 2.0 drive. It takes a bit of flash to impress me, but this thing has done it today, I'll tell you it has!

Thank YOU Patriot Memory, thank you for making this drive, you're the best!

Wavey Davey - 2-04-2010

The first one I got would not pass the data loss test for my xbox 360 which is my primary use for the drive. After a quick RMA and send off, I received another about 2 weeks later. This drive works perfectly fine. I only have 14.4 gb after formating but that's fine with me. After reading other reviews on the net, I know that I can even play my games from the drive. Other than that I just use it to save game files and my profile to migrate between 2 xbox 360's. I like the rubber coating but I wish it was a little thinner. I like the cap on the end but I know I might lose it if I don't keep up with it. Very satisfied with the load and save speed on the xbox 360. I have no experience with it on the pc.
I did do a lot of research and the only other 16gb flash drive I would have considered cost $20 more. I got this during the $[...] so now I'm just waiting on my prepaid Visa card in the mail.

I bought this item for the sole purpose of transferring files from my 20 gb xbox 360 hard drive to this flash drive. Everything went smoothly. I found out that every file can be transferred except for the games that you install onto the drive that requires a disc. So any XBox live Arcade games can be moved, but any games that you bought the disc and have it installed cannot be transferred. But you can install it onto the flash drive initially! You just can't transfer it. Not a big concern though.
The flash drive looks decent with its black color and red writing. The package came with a USB cable and a lanyard for any of you that would like to wear the flash drive around your neck. I recommend this flash drive!