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Buffalo RUF2-S4G-BS USB Drive


Date
: 07/17/06 – 11:55:04 PM

Author
:

Category
: Storage

Page 1 : Introduction

Manufacturer:
Buffalo

Price:
$230

Throughout the history of computing, many types of removable drives have come and gone, but none have reached the popularity of USB flash drives. Ever since the introduction of removable USB flash storage drives years ago, these small, durable, solid state devices have provided us with an undeniable level of convenience. Today, these devices come in numerous shapes, sizes, and colors. The Buffalo RUF2-S4G-BS takes a step backwards from this trend and focuses on a solely performance-oriented drive.

Buffalo has been a global provider of multimedia solutions for both home and small business environments for over 30 years. Throughout this time, Buffalo has remained committed to their goal of providing innovative and effective products.

Page 2 : Package and Contents

As tough as USB drives are, they are not indestructible and require some sort of protective packaging to ensure the product reaches the end user in excellent cosmetic and physical condition. When I first removed the Buffalo 4GB USB drive package from the padded FedEx envelope, I was shocked to find a flattened box complete with dented corners and signs of quite a bit of abuse. Though the package was heavily damaged, luckily the contents were safe and in superb condition.

Even though one may not be able to read Asian characters, the main points including compatibility, size, product number, and brand are written clearly in English.

The back of the box contains information about operating system compatibility and a featured called Secure Lock Ware or SLW, for short.

Inside the box is a clear plastic bag containing both a manual and the drive.

The Buffalo 4GB USB drive (RUF2-S4G-BS) is not small by any measures; the drive itself measures 76mm x 9mm x 19mm (L x W x H). Though large, the drive is extremely light, weighing in at 12g.

The back of the unit is covered by a piece of frosted clear plastic and a large memory chip is visible. This larger chip is actually composed of two smaller ones which are accessed simultaneously in order to boost read and write speeds.

One common, yet avoidable, nuisance with USB flash drives is loose caps. Buffalo has taken every precaution to ensure this problem would not be the case with the RUF2-S4G-BS drive. The cap snaps in place using notches to the body of the drive. To ensure that the cap is not lost while the drive is in use, the cap also attaches to the back of the drive.

Now, lets take a look at key features and specifications.

Page 3 : Features and Specifications

Here is what Buffalo has to say about their RUF2-S series drive:

The features and specifications from Brando.com.hk:

So, what exactly is this Secure Lock Ware? Secure Lock Ware is a free AES encryption algorithm which is used for securing data saved on storage mediums. Buffalo products are fully compatible with Secure Lock Ware allowing the user to encrypt the entire drive, a file, or a folder.

Page 4 : Installation and Testing Setup

Installing the Buffalo RUF2-S4G-BS drive is no different from installing any other USB device or USB drive, for that matter. Under a modern operating system environment, simply plug in the drive, and then wait for the operating system to recognize it.

Now that the drive is installed and ready for use, let's get on with the testing. We will begin with system specifications:

To accurately test the drive, both real world and synthetic benchmarks will be run. These tests include DiskBench, HD Tach RW, ATTO Disk Bench, SiS Sandra, HD Tune, and finally, an Overclockers Online favorite, IOZone.

Page 5 : Testing

HD Tach

First, we will take a look at some HD Tach scores in order to see if the Buffalo drive lives up to it's advertised 28MB/s read and 22MB/s write speeds. To ensure accuracy, the drive was formated twice prior to running these tests.

These results speak volumes, 30.0 MB/s read and 26.9 MB/s write is blazing fast!

Of course the Buffalo drive does not stack up against conventional internal storage mediums, but for an USB device, these numbers are amazing!

HD Tune

Next, we will take a look at HD Tune scores. Unlike HD Tach, HD Tune measures 1 MB as 1,048,576 bytes or 1024 KB whereas HD Tach measures 1 MB as 1,000,000 bytes or 1000KB, resulting in a lower score.

ATTO Disk Benchmark

ATTO Disk Benchmark, though old, is a very reliable and accurate benchmarking application intended to test RAID setups, but it may also be used to test removable storage devices.

As the graphs suggest, these results remain constant with the others and are again very positive.

IOZone

IOZone is a very comprehensive file system benchmark which measures and records a vast variety of different file operations and is among one of the best for testing I/O performance.

For the most part, the relationship between transfer size, read size, and file size remains relatively even, except for the files in the 65,000KB file size area.

The Buffalo 4GB drive performed strong until file sizes above 65000KB were copied; consistent with the read results, the transfer rate plunged.

Page 6 : Testing Part Two

Now that we have taken a look at how the Buffalo RUF2-S4GB-BS performs on its own, how does it compare to competitors?

DiskBench

DiskBench is a unique benchmarking utility which tests real world situations such as copying and reading files. Since the numbers reflect real world situations, this benchmark simply records the time it takes to either copy a file from one location to another or read a file off a drive. Because of the limited capacity of the OCZ Rally drive, not all tests can be performed.

Here we see the Buffalo 4GB drive trail behind the 40GB Seagate hard drive but it is still faster than the famed OCZ Rally drive.

In the read file benchmark, the Buffalo 4GB drive really showed its strength and consistently led the way.

SiSoft Sandra

SiSoft Sandra is another very well known all around benchmarking application. For this review we will be using the file system benchmark which analyzes results from various read/ write tests and average access time.

Again, these results are stunning; the Buffalo drive's results were comparable to an external hard drive!

Now that we have collected all of our data, what is the final verdict?

Page 7 : Conclusion

The numbers speak for themselves; Buffalo has put together an extremely solid product. For the majority of those who would actually benefit from an insanely large drive, performance is a necessity. The Buffalo RUF2-S4G-BS 4GB USB drive delivers just that – no frills, no bells, and no whistles.

The only real complaint one could make is very poor packaging. However, at the end of the day, what really counts is how the USB drive performs. "Awesome" does not do this product justice – the Buffalo RUF2-S4G-BS USB drive is
the
fastest USB flash drive we have seen here at Overclockers Online.

Advantages

• Extremely fast, up to 30.0MB/s read and 26.9MB/s write
• Small and light-weight

  Disadvantages

• Expensive
• Poor packaging

  Overclockers Online would like to thank Brando for making this review possible.