Well to be honest, this is more of benchmarks and impressions of this drive than a proper review. I won't be posting a proper conclusion for this, since many will perceive it as being biased. Still, i will try and give the readers the first hand impressions of this drive.
So on to the Product Details.
Product Details
First things first. The brand
About Mushkin Enhanced
Located at the base of the Rocky Mountains near Denver, Colorado, Mushkin Enhanced provides performance-enhanced computer products to users worldwide. Mushkin Enhanced products include a line of enhanced power supplies and complete selection of memory upgrades for desktops, notebooks and servers. Since the company's founding in 1994, Mushkin Enhanced has received numerous awards and commendations for quality, reliability and technical excellence. For nearly 15 years, Mushkin Enhanced has been dedicated to helping overclockers, gamers, IT managers, digital artists and mobile professionals enhance their computing experience by providing reliable, high-performance products.
Mushkin USB Turbo Flash Stick - Midnight Series - MKNUFDMN32GB
Specifications:
Capacity: 32 GB
Read up to: 40 MB/s
Write up to: 30 MB/s
Interface: USB 2.0
Plug & Play under: Windows 7, Vista, XP,
Linux 2.4 or later, MacOS 9, X or later
Warranty: 2 Years Limited
Packaging & Build Impressions
The drive comes in a nice little blister package, which is of a flip open type. So no more cutting yourself off when trying to open those hard blister packages. Though slightly less secure, it's much easier to open.
The contents are pretty much limited to the Midnight Turbo Drive and a small sheet which contains the serial number for the TurboFlash software included in the drive.
The Drive in itself is solidly built. It has a metal housing which provides the sturdiness, with a matte black finish and a nice little Mushkin logo on it. Also it has a small green plastic cap. Unfortunately, there is no space for putting the cap on the back of the pendrive, so it's pretty easy to lose it. Overall, the drive is built extremely well.
Here are some dark shots of teh Flash Drive with the Green LED Light on top glowing away in all it's glory.
Included Software
Now here is where the fun begins. The Midnight Turbo series flash drives have a software included on the drive, called TurboFlash. Installation for the first time requires the use of the Serial Key mentioned before, and takes just a few minutes to complete.
(Windows 7 x64 users may need to download an update here before installing - http://filestore.mushkin-emea.com/Software-Tools/USB-Flashdrive/TurboFlashUsb_Mushkin.rar)
Once installed, the software launches itself, and as we can see, is set on Turbo mode by default. There is also an option to remove the drive safely from this GUI itself.
So does this software add anything to the performance ? Let's see next. On to the benchmarks.
Benchmarks
The bench system used was
I used the following software's for benchmarking the drive.
Results
ATTO 2.46
Amazing display by the drive. The write speeds were close to 30-33MB/s across the filesizes and the Reads reaching as high as 43-44MB/s. Seriously one of the fastest drives I have ever used.
CrystalDiskmark v3.0
Once again, the Sequential and even the 512k Read speeds break the 40MB/s barrier without the drive breaking a sweat. On the other side, the Seq. Write speeds top out at a whopping 34MB/s. The 4k speeds are comparatively faster than most drives out there too.
HDTune 4.50 Pro benchmark
Once again the drive shows its true colours in the Read test in HDTune Pro. Average Read speeds of around 37.6MB/s are amazing.
Real World Transfer Speeds
Now to the end user, synthetic benchmarks are well, just synthetic. What we really care about are real world speeds. When it comes to real world transfers, many amazing drives come out as just average drives. Let's see if the Midnight 32GB UFD can beat the competition.
A constant file size of 2215MB was kept across the tests and the time taken as shown in TeraCopy was used to mark the speeds.
WRITE
|
Default FAT32
|
Turbo FAT32
|
Default NTFS
|
Turbo NTFS
Time(s)
| 77.74 | 66.47 | 79.45 | 66.70
Speed(MB/s) | 28.49 | 33.32 | 27.88 | 33.21
READ | Default FAT32 | Turbo FAT32 | Default NTFS | Turbo NTFS Time(s) | 69.45 | 57.92 | 71.23 | 60.22
Speed(MB/s) | 31.89 | 38.24 | 31.10 | 36.78
So the TurboFlash software does work. We can see a jump from ~28MB/s Writes to a whopping 33.3MB/s when Turbo mode is enabled. As for the READ's, you can see a nice jump there too from around 32MB/s to 38MB/s. And the best part is , unlike many other drives, the speed is consistent between FAT32 as well as NTFS partitions.
On to the conclusion.
Conclusion
The Mushkin Midnight Turbo Flash Drive proved one thing, it's bloody fast. It's built well too, as expected from a manufacturer like Mushkin. Overall the perfect buy for someone looking for a large capacity Flash Drive with blazing speeds. Though you need to use the proprietary TurboFlash software to unlock the maximum speeds, the drive works brilliantly without it too, albeit just a bit slower. The drive is available in 16GB and 32GB capacities. The 16GB drive is available for Rs 3450/- and the 32GB one for Rs 6450/-, so they are not exactly cheap. But then again, they are that fast too :hap2:.
I would like to thank the Mushkin Enhanced team, especially Sean , as well as my good friend Naga for helping me in reviewing such an amazing product.
This is my first proper review of any product, and i am pretty sure there are many things i could have done better. So do pour in you feedback as well. Appreciation and Criticism are both welcome.
Cheers !
So on to the Product Details.
Product Details
First things first. The brand
About Mushkin Enhanced
Located at the base of the Rocky Mountains near Denver, Colorado, Mushkin Enhanced provides performance-enhanced computer products to users worldwide. Mushkin Enhanced products include a line of enhanced power supplies and complete selection of memory upgrades for desktops, notebooks and servers. Since the company's founding in 1994, Mushkin Enhanced has received numerous awards and commendations for quality, reliability and technical excellence. For nearly 15 years, Mushkin Enhanced has been dedicated to helping overclockers, gamers, IT managers, digital artists and mobile professionals enhance their computing experience by providing reliable, high-performance products.
Mushkin USB Turbo Flash Stick - Midnight Series - MKNUFDMN32GB
Specifications:
Capacity: 32 GB
Read up to: 40 MB/s
Write up to: 30 MB/s
Interface: USB 2.0
Plug & Play under: Windows 7, Vista, XP,
Linux 2.4 or later, MacOS 9, X or later
Warranty: 2 Years Limited
Packaging & Build Impressions
The drive comes in a nice little blister package, which is of a flip open type. So no more cutting yourself off when trying to open those hard blister packages. Though slightly less secure, it's much easier to open.
The contents are pretty much limited to the Midnight Turbo Drive and a small sheet which contains the serial number for the TurboFlash software included in the drive.
The Drive in itself is solidly built. It has a metal housing which provides the sturdiness, with a matte black finish and a nice little Mushkin logo on it. Also it has a small green plastic cap. Unfortunately, there is no space for putting the cap on the back of the pendrive, so it's pretty easy to lose it. Overall, the drive is built extremely well.
Here are some dark shots of teh Flash Drive with the Green LED Light on top glowing away in all it's glory.
Included Software
Now here is where the fun begins. The Midnight Turbo series flash drives have a software included on the drive, called TurboFlash. Installation for the first time requires the use of the Serial Key mentioned before, and takes just a few minutes to complete.
(Windows 7 x64 users may need to download an update here before installing - http://filestore.mushkin-emea.com/Software-Tools/USB-Flashdrive/TurboFlashUsb_Mushkin.rar)
Once installed, the software launches itself, and as we can see, is set on Turbo mode by default. There is also an option to remove the drive safely from this GUI itself.
So does this software add anything to the performance ? Let's see next. On to the benchmarks.
Benchmarks
The bench system used was
- Intel i7-930 @ 4.2Ghz
- Gigabyte GA-EX58A-UD7
- Lian-Li PC-A77F
- WD Raptor 74GB
- 3x2GB DDR3 1600Mhz CAS 7 RAM
- Microsoft Windows 7 x64
I used the following software's for benchmarking the drive.
- ATTO Disk benchmark v 2.46
- CrystalDiskMark v 3.0
- Custom file transfer tests using TeraCopy
Results
ATTO 2.46
Amazing display by the drive. The write speeds were close to 30-33MB/s across the filesizes and the Reads reaching as high as 43-44MB/s. Seriously one of the fastest drives I have ever used.
CrystalDiskmark v3.0
Once again, the Sequential and even the 512k Read speeds break the 40MB/s barrier without the drive breaking a sweat. On the other side, the Seq. Write speeds top out at a whopping 34MB/s. The 4k speeds are comparatively faster than most drives out there too.
HDTune 4.50 Pro benchmark
Once again the drive shows its true colours in the Read test in HDTune Pro. Average Read speeds of around 37.6MB/s are amazing.
Real World Transfer Speeds
Now to the end user, synthetic benchmarks are well, just synthetic. What we really care about are real world speeds. When it comes to real world transfers, many amazing drives come out as just average drives. Let's see if the Midnight 32GB UFD can beat the competition.
A constant file size of 2215MB was kept across the tests and the time taken as shown in TeraCopy was used to mark the speeds.
Speed(MB/s) | 28.49 | 33.32 | 27.88 | 33.21
READ | Default FAT32 | Turbo FAT32 | Default NTFS | Turbo NTFS Time(s) | 69.45 | 57.92 | 71.23 | 60.22
Speed(MB/s) | 31.89 | 38.24 | 31.10 | 36.78
So the TurboFlash software does work. We can see a jump from ~28MB/s Writes to a whopping 33.3MB/s when Turbo mode is enabled. As for the READ's, you can see a nice jump there too from around 32MB/s to 38MB/s. And the best part is , unlike many other drives, the speed is consistent between FAT32 as well as NTFS partitions.
On to the conclusion.
Conclusion
The Mushkin Midnight Turbo Flash Drive proved one thing, it's bloody fast. It's built well too, as expected from a manufacturer like Mushkin. Overall the perfect buy for someone looking for a large capacity Flash Drive with blazing speeds. Though you need to use the proprietary TurboFlash software to unlock the maximum speeds, the drive works brilliantly without it too, albeit just a bit slower. The drive is available in 16GB and 32GB capacities. The 16GB drive is available for Rs 3450/- and the 32GB one for Rs 6450/-, so they are not exactly cheap. But then again, they are that fast too :hap2:.
I would like to thank the Mushkin Enhanced team, especially Sean , as well as my good friend Naga for helping me in reviewing such an amazing product.
This is my first proper review of any product, and i am pretty sure there are many things i could have done better. So do pour in you feedback as well. Appreciation and Criticism are both welcome.
Cheers !
