Flash Memory drives have increased in popularity over the last year and rightly so, they are immensely handy little gadgets giving you the power to transfer files from computer to computer by simple "plug and play" functionality . Originally however this ease of use was hampered by incredibly poor read, write and access times, making anything but the smallest of transfers a painfully slow experience.

OCZ have stepped into this sector with three high speed USB2 drives, a 512MB, a 1GB and a 2GB. Today we are going to be looking at the 512MB and the 2GB models. Both of these are perfectly capable of handling file transfers, or important tasks such as an offline email backup.

These units are incredibly diminutive at 2 5/8” (L) x 5/8” (W). you can see below one of the Rally drives next to a "typical" 64meg model.

OCZ are implementing dual channel technology in these drives which allows data to be read and written on 2 chips simultaneously, this in theory should speed up the units. Ill be testing this thoroughly over the course of the review.

With each drive you get a USB extender cable (female to male) as well as a carrying strap.

Installing the drives just involves a simple insertion into a USB 2 port, of course if you are using an older machine with USB1.1 the speed of these devices will be much slower, so it is advised you ensure your machine is capable of USB2, if not you can purchase PCI cards with onboard USB2.

OCZ certainly know how to produce a classy looking unit, and compared to the standard (ugly) design of most flash drives, the Rally is miles ahead, its understated yet aesthetically pleasing, and yes it matches my customised Alienware shuttle which ill be using for the testng so OCZ get another point for that.

When the drives are writing or reading a blue LED on the front flickers to show access, ive taken a short video clip (both under 5 megabytes) to show you just how it looks during operation.

click image to watch DIVX

click image to watch QUICKTIME

If you have problems streaming the above videos, right click, save as to your desktop.

 

Next: Test System