After opening the package, I popped my KINGSTON FLASH MEMORY into a USB port and copied a number of relatively small files to it (310 files totalling 5.1 mb). It took a full 2 minutes (that's 44 kBps), which was slow enough to convince me I'd gotten a lemon (I copied the same files to my old Sandisk Cruzer 1 gb in 20 seconds). After a couple emails to tech support, Kingston advised me to return it for a new one.
The new one arrived quickly, but performed identically to the old one. For kicks, I installed Sandra 2008 and benchmarked the device's performance. I found that, for small files (512 B), the transfer KINGSTON FLASH MEMORYrate was barely 1 kBps. I contacted Kingston support again, this time providing more details about my testing and the benchmark results I'd gotten out of Sandra. The tech confirmed that this is a low-end device, that the slowness I was experiencing was normal, and that I probably should have sprung for something in their DTS line (too rich for my blood).
Now the good news. If you don't tend to copy a lot of small files, you'll probably be perfectly happy with this . Once the file size gets to about 256 kb, writes to this drive speed up nicely. Reads are always fast. And tech support was exemplary. My only other complaint would be that the cheap plastic case does not inspire confidence.
No matter how you look at KINGSTON FLASH MEMORY however, this is not a 5-star item by any stretch of the imagination. Not even for the money.
