HyperX, (a division of Kingston) recently released its new series of flash drives, the HyperX Fury USB 3.0 Flash Drive line. The flash drives are designed to appeal to budget-conscious gamers and enthusiasts, while providing solid performance. This review will be taking a look at the 64 GB version of the drive (model number HXF30/64GB).

The Fury drive feels solid in the hand. It has a lanyard loop on the back to attach to a lanyard or keychain. It also has a cap, as opposed to utilizing a slider to protect the USB plug. The cap can snap onto the back of the flash drive when the drive is in use to help prevent the user from losing the cap. It is this reviewers opinion that it would be better if USB drive caps had some sort of attachment to the body of the drive, in case the cap were to accidentally fall off the top of the bottom of the drive. However, in the case of the Fury, the cap appears to attach solidly to both the USB plug as well as the back (though not quite as securely on the back).

In order to test the Fury’s performance, two benchmarks were run: AIDA64 Disk Benchmark and CrystalDiskMark. The tests were run both while the drive was plugged into a USB 3.0 port as well as a USB 2.0 port. It should also be noted that the chipset used for the benchmarks was an Intel X79 board, which does not support native USB 3.0. It is possible that speeds would be slightly better in a USB 3.0 port on a newer chipset.

First up are the CrystalDiskMark results:

The Fury managed a sequential read speed of 186.8 MB/s and a sequential write speed of 144.0 MB/s while plugged into the USB 3.0 port. Both of these numbers far exceed the expectations of the listed specifications for the drive, but it is expected that the drive will lose some speed after some usage. Also, since most typical usage of a flash drive is not simply sequential reads and writes, the speeds will be diminished in general use cases.

In the USB 2.0 port, the drive had a sequential read speed of 34.50 MB/s and a sequential write speed of 30.26 MB/s. These numbers show that the limiting factor here was clearly the USB 2.0 specification, and those are approximately the speeds a user can expect from any drive running on USB 2.0 that would otherwise have higher speeds.

Next up are the AIDA64 Disk Benchmark results:

In the USB 3.0 port, the Fury 64 GB USB drive performed admirably, putting out linear reads of approximately 177 MB/s and a random read of just under 190 MB/s. It also had an average read access time of 0.81 ms, which is quite impressive.

The Fury plugged into the USB 2.0 port again performed as expected, with linear read speeds almost exactly 33 MB/s and a random read speed of 33.5 MB/s. The average read access time also took a hit in the USB 2.0 port, coming in at 1.22 ms, a 50% increase.

The HyperX Fury USB 3.0 64 GB flash drive currently retails at a price of $49.99. Other 64 GB USB 3.0 flash drives can be purchased online for as cheap as $25, but that does not mean the Fury is not worth it. Attributes to consider other than price include durability, warranty, reliability, fit and finish, and performance. Even though Kingston itself has other 64 GB USB 3.0 flash drives available for approximately $30, those tend to have a target audience of general consumers, whereas the Fury is marketed towards gamers and enthusiasts.

The drive itself is clearly nicer and more aggressive in appearance than a typical consumer flash drive. Also, as stated earlier, the drive itself feels very well made and sturdy. It also has solid performance, far exceeding its listed specifications. However, considering there are so many options available at under the $50 price point, it makes it difficult to suggest the difference in price is worth it for the Fury 64 GB USB 3.0 drive. Time will tell as the drive gets used, and its reliability will be tested. Also, the drive will eventually start to drop in price.

Considering the drive individually, it’s a solid product with great performance and this reviewer would highly recommend it. For those wanting to save more money, they can easily find some cheaper drives that may share similar performance and specifications.

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SanDisk and FusionIO have entered into an agreement where SanDisk will purchase all of FusionIO and its assets to the tune of $1.1 billion in cash, once again continuing the consolidation of the NAND flash market into fewer bigger companies. This announcement is likely a response to Seagate’s recent acquisition of the NAND flash division of Avago which included the SandForce controller division. However, the real truth is that FusionIO is not anywhere near a consumer flash storage company and most of their customers are professionals or enterprise while most of SandForce’s products are consumer focused. I’m sure SanDisk would have loved to buy both companies, but SanDisk clearly believes their consumer offerings are already fairly strong and want to strengthen their enterprise offerings. This is actually SanDisk’s second enterprise storage acquisition in recent years because currently many of their enterprise drives are actually from Smart Storage Systems.

With the FusionIO acquisition, SanDisk is getting a pretty good deal and a very strong PCIe SSD division. Even though FusionIO may have a fairly novel SSD solution that is very attractive for very high-end performance, the company’s been struggling to perform financially over the course of the past few years and appears to have mostly saturated their existing customer base. However, SanDisk is now buying the company for slightly over their current market value, which is about 1/4 the price of where FusionIO had originally been at their peak at nearly $40 a share (or roughly $4 billion).

SanDisk is clearly on a tear in terms of their solid state storage business as the company’s current share price is at 52-week highs and actually at historic highs for the company’s history. SanDisk’s stock is currently at $101, which is the highest the company’s stock has ever been, because the share price has gone up 3% on today’s news, as well as FusionIO’s is up nearly 23%. So, clearly, the investors in both companies believe that this acquisition is a good one and that SanDisk is better served by having bought FusionIO. It will be interesting to see how all of the companies that are consolidating under Seagate, SanDisk, Toshiba, Intel and Samsung will eventually compete with each other, which should ultimately result in some pretty good competition as we’re already starting to see a bit.

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Hard work does pay off...

Prior to this role, Jadranko was responsible for Eastern and South East Europe. Thanks to his team effort, the company expanded to 25 countries in the afore mentioned regions, and the logical step for the takeMS management was to promote Jadranko to the role of General Director of Sales for the whole company.
“We enjoy having won Jadranko Jelavic for this important position”, stated Edmund Dägele, president and CEO of the takeMS International AG. “He brings in a lot of marketing know-how and is familiar with the dynamic and competitive market environment. Besides he convinces through his competence and professionalism with customers just the same as with associates.” Jadranko Jelavic was caught stating his future mission: “My aim is to upgrade the takeMS brand and to go on following that successful way”.
I wish him all the best in his new position.

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