S102 Pro USB 3.0 16GB

Packaging & Contents

The Adata S102 Pro ships on a small piece of card with a plastic bubble housing the drive. On the front of the package we found details of the lifetime warranty, download instructions for Adatas free flash drive software package and a read speed rating of up to 100 MB/s. We did not bother downloading the software as we have found that freeware alternatives such as SycnBack for backups and TrueCrypt for encryption are generally far superior to the bloated software packages that often ship with flash drives. No write speed rating was indicated on the drive.

Box Front

Box Back

Dimensions & Weight

The S102 Pro measures 6.2cm long, 1.9cm wide and 1.1cm high. The Adata is smaller than average for a flash drive but due to its width it may still obstruct adjacent ports on a computer. You might need to get an extension cable if you have a lot of devices connected to the same cluster of USB ports on your PC. Weighing in at 13 grams the S102 Pro is lighter than average.

Build Quality

The Adata S102 Pro has an aluminium shell encasing it which gives it a good solid feel. The cap can be conveniently clipped onto the back of the drive while the drive is in use but it does not clip on particularly tightly leaving it at risk of loss. Unfortunately, unlike on most flash drives, there is no LED to indicate whether or not the drive is in use. There is a small secure hole at the back of the drive where you can attach a keychain.

Front

Back

Test System

CrystalDiskMark Speed Test^[FAQ]

CrystalDiskMark is a free disk benchmarking utility that is very simple to use. It takes eight measurements: the read and write speeds in megabytes per second (MBps) for sequential, 512KB, random 4KB and 4KB parallel disk operations. There are more screenshots from this benchmark posted on the web than any other, probably due to its clean and simple display. There is further information, including instructions on how to benchmark your own drives, on the CrystalDiskMark wiki page.

CrystalDiskMark Score

The S102 Pro scored 90/23 MB/s in the sequential read/write tests. These speeds are average for a USB 3.0 drive. The performance profile for this drive favours reading over writing but overall the balance is acceptable.

CrystalDiskMark Benchmark Speed Test

ATTO Disk Benchmark^[FAQ]

The Atto Disk Benchmark has probably been around for longer than any other disk benchmarking software, and you can tell from its dated interface! The utility was designed to measure regular disk drive performance but it's more than up to the task of measuring both USB flash drive and SSD speeds as well. The utility measures disk performance rates for various sizes of file and displays the results in a bar chart showing read and write speeds at each file size. The results are displayed in megabytes per second (MBps). There is further information, including instructions on how to benchmark your own drive, on the Atto wiki page.

ATTO Benchmark Speed Test

ATTO Score

The ATTO results for the S102 Pro are broadly in line with the CrystalDiskMark scores and at 90/23 MB/s come in just under Adatas claimed read/write speeds of 100/25 MB/s.

AS SSD Real World Copy Speed^[FAQ]

The AS SSD benchmarking program was recently developed specifically for benchmarking SSD's. The utility is able to take several measurements that are well suited to solid state drives. One of the tests, ISO copy, is also relevant to slower storage devices including flash drives. The ISO copy test places two large 500MB files in a folder on the drive and then times how long it takes to copy the folder to another location on the same drive. The result is reported in both MBps and time taken. It's a real-world test that gauges a drives ability to read and write at the same time. Drives that have a good balance between their read and write speed fare relatively well on this test. There is further information, including instructions on how to use it to benchmark your own drive, on the AS SSD wiki page.

Real World Copy Speed Score

This test shows that the S102 would take 65.93 seconds to create a copy of a large 1GB video file. Generally flash drives complete this test at roughly half their sequential write rates. The S102 performed relatively very well in this test.

AS-SSD Copy Benchmark Speed Test

Conclusion

The Adata S102 Pro is a reasonable flash drive. Physically it has a reasonably compact form unlike its older sibling the N005 Nobility. In terms of performance the drive is around average and in terms of price it's also average. There are no obvious problems in the drive's performance profile. Overall the drive is ok but there are better bargains to be had at this time.

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Original Review by:  
Updated 12 years ago.