Patriot Supersonic Rage Prime USB 3.2 Gen 2 Flash Drive - 250GB - PEF250GRPMW32U

I purchased the Patriot Supersonic Rage Prime (250GB model) to replace an EOL'd Patriot Supersonic Rage Pro 256GB flash drive which had begun randomly falling off the bus.Here are some useful data points about the Supersonic Rage Prime:- Throughput on USB 3.0 controller (Intel) was between 425-450MByte/second, both reads and writes, on a USB 3.0 chipset. IOPs are good for a consumer USB flash drive.- Optimal block I/O size appears to be 256KB or larger, but tops out at about 1MByte.- Drive comes preformatted as exFAT using a 256KB cluster size.- Has a red access LED placed under the white plastic shell, thus diffusing its intensity: no "blinding" LEDs!- Drive does not get hot at all, only slightly warm (barely).Speed tests used performatted default (exFAT + 256KB clusters), and were done via a front-panel USB port (known to provide less power/current than those on the rear of a PC).I did not test NTFS, though it will probably be around the same (assuming write cache is bypassed). I also did not test speed on a USB 3.1 or USB 3.2 chipset, but I imagine performance is even higher on those.Conclusion:If you're looking for a good-performing USB 3.x flash drive that doesn't have obnoxious features, doesn't get hot, lacks obnoxious eye-piercing blue LEDs, isn't excessively large/bulky, is priced decently, and "just works", then this is the drive for you.

Purchased to use as removable backup for my music files, which currently sits at about 185GB of total music files. DO NOT purchase if you do not have SSD / NVMe drives in your computer, HDD's are much to slow to take advantage of this thumb drive transfer speeds. I see some reviews showing VERY low transfer speeds..... transfer speed is from one drive to another drive and will be limited by the slowest factor - transfer from a HDD being the biggest, bad or low quality cable, faulty USB port, etc....I transferred one of my music folders from my Gen4 M.2 NVMe SSD drive over to the thumb drive (see attached image) over 80GB of files in 4 minutes 8 seconds - that's over 330MB/sec average transfer speed.This thumb drive appears to have a some amount of super-speed transfer cache as the first 20 seconds of transfer was pegged at a little over 1GB/sec. You can see the effect of this by cranking the test size of Crystal Disk Mark up to 64GiB. Even then this drive is still posting impressive numbers for what it is.If speed is the only concern, Kingston DataTraveler Max 256GB drive hits peak speeds of 1GB/sec, while the Patriot RAGE is only 250GB (232GB capacity in Windows), hits 600MB/sec, and is $8 more than the Kingston, so value wise I cannot give it a 5, but it's so much smaller / portable / convenient than the Kingston.Because of the much more portable form factor, I would definitely recommend this drive over the Kingston DataTraveler Max.

No details on longevity as these are fresh out of the package, but it's nice and speedy. I performed this test on a Lenovo P16 gen 1 w/ Windows 10.Compares very similarly to the PNY 256GB Pro Elite V2. CrystalDiskInfo says they both have the same firmware: "UHFM00.6", so it sure seems to me like they have the same flash/usb controller. As far as I'm concerned, they are the "same drive" performance wise, but with different chassis/pcb/packaging. The PNY has a metal shell/sheath on its OUTER casing, so that wouldn't help thermals, it just adds weight and makes it heavier. I would have like to see the inner shell that encases the PCB to be metal instead. I would expect both to be equally durable when closed and tossed in a backpack. The patriot is a little smaller and lighter - so probably less likely to get broken off in a USB port by accident - which IMO, is how most retractable USB drives get damaged (aside from water).

I tested this drive in two systems. I was using a 60GB file.One only has USB 3.0 ports, older system. I was able to read from this drive at about 225MB/s to an SSD, and then when I wrote to the drive it wrote at about 160MB/s. OS is Win8.1 which shows speed at any given moment so you can see any slowdowns. This drive maintained write speed so if there's any kind of caching it's a very large cacheI then tested on a newer PC with Ubuntu MATE, using a USB C 3.1 gen1 port via a hub. For either reading or writing going to a SATA III SSD, I was hitting about 225MB/sThis drive could be faster than these speeds, but I'm pretty impressed with writing to this drive at 225MB/s. I was a little bothered by the read speeds because it should have been better. The last test I did was writing to an NVMe SSD, and that got my read speed off the drive up to 250MB/s . I don't know if the drive being very warm at this point caused it to slow down, but if so then I see that as an issue for the drive. The older Rage drives could be used to move lots of data and I wouldn't experience slow downs, but I never got write speeds so fast.So, for me this is a mixed bag. I really like the write speeds to this USB drive but the read speeds I was hitting were pretty trivial for the better USB drives, and slower than even the Rage Elite in one system I tested.I have to drop it to 4 stars because of this, but I am impressed with the write speed when connected through a USB C 3.1 gen1 hub and port.

Until i bought and used this, I had no idea one flash drive could be faster than another. All I wanted was enough storage space to transfer a lot of files (100+ GB) from one device to another. What I got was something that could handle this with ease, and do the whole thing in just minutes. Very satisfied.

Mind you, this is a USB 3.2 flash drive. When I plug it into my USB 3.0 port, it is readable at normal speed, but very slow to write with. With that said, I am posting a photo of how fast it is when you use the proper USB hub (3.2). Patriot has a winner with this series...and I guarantee that when used in a USB 3.2 Hub, it is a smoker. About to purchase a larger sized one (probably going with the 1TB).