I wanted a somewhat swift USB3 key, to put a bootable OS and not too big since the said OS does not take up much space. The two questions were thus:
- Whether the speeds reached in 64 or 128 GB égalemen are held in the small, 16GB
- Whether the SanDisk Extreme can be formatted bootable device
1. The flow rates:
No miracle, the controller does not happen with only 16 GB to get mad rates obtained on 64/128 GB. Below the rates measured with CrystalDiskMark Seven 64b with a motherboard Asus Z97 Deluxe and Turbo Mode USB3 enabled. I put the worst results at best they were 10/15% better.
Sequential Read: 48 575 MB / s
Sequential Write: 47,418 MB / s
512KB Random Read: 46943 MB / s
512KB Random Write: 23,575 MB / s
4KB Random Read (QD = 1): 11 015 MB / s [2689.3 IOPS]
4KB Random Write (QD = 1): 8.080 MB / s [1972.7 IOPS]
4KB Random Read (QD = 32): 9545 MB / s [2330.3 IOPS]
4KB Random Write (QD = 32): 7914 MB / s [1932.2 IOPS]
Roughly can count on 50MB sequentially. Which in absolute terms is not bad!
2. Can boot an OS on this key?
At first glance it is impossible because the key is not seen by Windows as a device but as a separate hard drive. And indeed the "traditional" tools to make a bootable and install a system .iso do not see it. Ouch.
But by checking some of Microsoft's side, since the problem comes in part from home, I found this tool: Windows USB / DVD Download Tool => [...]. It's their house tool to write images on a USB stick. And this tool see very well because the key does not seek only the USB key, it takes all attached devices (do not make false manipulation).
In the end, the key is very easy bootable and you can install the image of just about every OS. And of course, the installation of the OS on another machine USB3 becomes a treat :)
Why 3 stars? Because SanDisk could clearly write that the 16GB version was very far sustained rates of its big sisters, and because he must still seek information to mount a bootable OS as the size / price / debit lends itself Naturally in this exercise.
Buy recommended if supported bit rates are not a top priority.
