Patriot Supersonic Bolt XT Flash Drive Review (64GB)

AS SSD BENCHMARK VER1.7

The toughest benchmark available for solid state drives is AS SSD as it relies solely on incompressible data samples when testing performance.  For the most part, AS SSD tests can be considered the ‘worst case scenario’ in obtaining data transfer speeds and many enthusiasts like AS SSD for their needs. Transfer speeds are displayed on the left with IOPS results on the right.

So as we can see in AS SSD the drive is performing right around what it is advertised at with the sequential reads being a bit faster than the 150MB/s advertised, but the writes being quite faster than the 30MB/s advertised, it is always nice when manufacturers under estimate their drives performance especially since AS SSD is a really grueling test.

CRYSTAL DISK BENCHMARK VER 3.03 X64

Crystal Disk Benchmark is used to measure read and write performance through sampling of random data which is, for the most part, incompressible. Performance is virtually identical, regardless of data sample so we have included only that using random data samples.

Crystal Disk Mark with its 100% Random data shows us that it is performing solidly again, doing even better than in AS SSD which is to be expected. The 4k performance isn’t as bad as it could be as well, which is always nice, but still a very far cry from SSDs.

ATTO DISK BENCHMARK VER2.47

ATTO Disk Benchmark is perhaps one of the oldest benchmarks going and is definitely the main staple for manufacturer performance specifications. ATTO uses RAW or compressible data and, for our benchmarks, we use a set length of 256mb and test both the read and write performance of various transfer sizes ranging from 0.5 to 8192kb. Manufacturers prefer this method of testing as it deals with raw (compressible) data rather than random (includes incompressible data) which, although more realistic, results in lower performance results.

Again we see more of the same with it ending up at around 150MB/s and 50MB/s read and write respectively. You can see after 64KB it really picks up speed and is expected of most drives in its class.

REAL WORLD TESTING 

In the real world test the drive again performed respectably, didn’t break records by any means but was decent. Though the photos were slightly faster than we expected, as usual, lots of smaller files are slower than fewer large files.

FINAL THOUGHTS AND CONCLUSION

After all of our testing, we found the drive does not perform as well as other drives in its price range, so for most users who don’t need all the security features in this drive it is not ideal. But for those looking for peace of mind this drive delivers, from AES encryption, its rugged design and 5 year warranty, worrying is something you won’t have to do.

Those looking for a drive with sensitive and important data need to look no further. And with that I give it our Bronze Seal.

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