OCZ Diesel 16gb USB Flash Drive Review

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If you are a computer enthusiast, I am sure you have heard of a company called OCZ. They have been around for a while and have been producing a very high quality and top performance products for a very demanding PC crowd. When it comes to making performance memory, OCZ makes some of the best memory related products on the market as well as some other items like power supplies and other peripherals.

Diesel does have aluminum housing; it’s black in color (feels like an anodized paint) with the word DIESEL on the front with the capacity listed on the bottom, and another OCZ logo on the back.

ocz2

The cap is plastic and it fits tightly on the USB connector so you won’t have to worry about losing it, but I would have liked to see some sort of strap for when it is off. On the bottom is a clear plastic loop that has a place for a strap or a keychain. I would have like to see OCZ include a strap for the drive, incase you like to wear it on your neck, or hang it up in your office.

ocz1

Specs:

Model: OCZUSBDSL16G

-USB 2.0 Certified
-Mainstream Speeds
-Aluminum Chassis
-True Plug and Play (Compatible with MAC OS X)
-2 Year Warranty

The OCZ Diesel does have a red LED indicator in the bottom end that blinks to show activity.

ocz_light

Testing:

Although many of you already know the difference between FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS format, here is a quick overview for those of you that are not very familiar. Sometimes like myself before using a USB flash drive I wonder which file system to format the drive with. The first thing you need to establish is weather you will be transferring large files, will you be using it on more then one computer system like PC and MAC, what’s more important to you speed or file size. Here is a quick breakdown of file systems and various pros, and cons:

Fat16:

Pros

Decent Disk Space Economy
Fast Transfer Rate with Small File Sizes
Average Fault Tolerance

Cons

Max Volume Size 2GB
MAX File Size 2GB
No Built-In Security

Fat32:

Pros

Max Volume (32GB) and File Size Larger than FAT16
Average Disc Space Economy
Better drive performance (On Smaller Volumes than NTFS)

Cons

MAX File Size 4GB
No Built-In Security
Minimal Fault Tolerance

NTFS:

Pros

Max File Size Nearly Unlimited
Max Volume Size 2TB
Maximum Fault Tolerance
Built-In Security

Cons

Not a Great Performer with Small File Sizes
NTFS may wear it out faster (disputable with modern USB sticks)
Not compatible with MAC and FAT OS

I am sure there are other pros and cons that I have missed, so if you can think of any, post it in the comments and I will add them. Now I can not tell you which file system to use, so you have to figure out what is more important to you and where your flash drive will be used the most.

I have decided just for comparison purposes to run couple of test on both FAT32 and NTFS just to see if there will be a major difference in speed, and here is what I got:

FAT32:

fat32

And now NTFS:

ntfs

You will notice that the only difference in read and write speeds are visible if you transfer smaller file sizes between 512 bytes and 2MB. Once you start using larger files the speed is practically identical. All in all based on the results you see above this is a very fast and durable drive.

Later we may put this drive agains a few other flash drives that we have on hand, for some comparison purposes.

Conclusion:

Overall I really like the OCZ Diesel 16GB flash drive. It feels very durable, and due to its small and sleek size, makes it very portable, and can be placed on your key chain. If you are looking for a USB flash drive that is good quality, good performance at a very reasonable price, you can not go wrong with OCZ Diesel.

Pros: