USB 3.0 Memory Stick vs Sata III SSD

[Meehael]

Are they even comparable? A USB3.0 memory stick of 64GB is half the price of a 60GB SSD. USB3.0 is 5Gbit/s and SATAIII is 6 Gbit/s.

I ordered an SSD already and I plan on using it for games (faster loading-it takes about 2 mins to load Guild Wars 2 on my current 7200RPM HDD).

Should've I bought a USB3 memory stick instead? Am I missing something?

Thx!

 

[smakme7757]

Both are serial so the speeds would be comparable, but they are theoretical limits. I'm pretty sure USB also has higher latency than the SATA interface as SATA is designed primarily for storage where as USB is "universal", so it's designed for all types of devices.

I guess the answer is that an SSD was the better buy.

 

[Hellhammer]

USB drives usually have crappy eMMC controllers. The sequential speeds can be okay but random IO performance is usually horrible unless the stick has an SSD-grade controller (like SF-2281). You made the right choice by buying an SSD, although personally I would've bought a 120/128GB one since the difference isn't big.

 

[Lorne]

Memory sticks have alot higher failure rate.

 

[Deders]

The chips on the memory sticks themselves will be much slower than the array of chips on the USB stick, regardless of the potential bandwidth of the pathway it can transfer data across.

Also SSD's will be optimised much better for day to day usage.

You'd be lucky to get 60MB/s from a USB stick.

 

[smakme7757]

You'd be lucky to get 60MB/s from a USB stick.

Not really, mine does 200MB/s reads¨and 120 write
DataTraveler HyperX 3.0

 

[Deders]

Not really, mine does 200MB/s reads¨and 120 write
DataTraveler HyperX 3.0

Fair enough, although that model costs nearly as much as a 64GB SSD drive, and as impressive as it is, it's still quite bit less performance than SSD drives.

How does it do with 4k read and writes?

 

[smakme7757]

Fair enough, although that model costs nearly as much as a 64GB SSD drive, and as impressive as it is, it's still quite bit less performance than SSD drives.

How does it do with 4k read and writes?

I don't know.

I don't benchmark my thumb drives. I just took notice of the Windows file copy speed and the marketing leaflet. I use it as a portable Linux install to repair bung servers at uni.