USB Flash Drives

I'm considering buying one and haven't decided whether to settle for USB 2.0 (my PC port speed), or go for USB 3.0, in the future proofing way.

Are the write speeds of USB 3 drives much faster than USB 2.0, and will I get the benefit of them over USB 2.0 interface read speeds?

I was looking at this last week.
http://www.gigaflash.com.hk/News/2012/20120525.html

http://usbspeed.nirsoft.net/usb_drive_speed_summary....

In theory 3.0 should be 10x faster than 2.0 but in practice its about 3 - 3.5x faster.

I've not noticed any difference with my USB3 stick on a USB3 cable in a USB 3 port, compared to the same brand's USB2 stick with USB2 cable and USB2 port.

Maybe it's my PC (Win 7 Pro), or the software I tend to use with it - Laplink. Indeed there are many times when the USB3 is slower.

Possibly if you're using,say, Windows Explorer to move very large files it may be measurably quicker. But as far as I'm concerned speed isn't the be all and end all that it is, or seems to be, with some.

Looking at the bottom of the first link, there's little difference in the write speeds. I was hoping that the USB 2.0 interrface would maximise the drive write speeds. Aw well. USB 2.0 it seems.

Had a think since posting the link, and since I have a 120GB passport, I can't really justify a massive spend on anything anyway. I tidied up some files last night and took 7.5GB down to 3.5GB. Add another Gig or so of music, and an 8GB stick would do it. Looking at:

http://www.ebuyer.com/search?sort=pricelow&store=33&...

I might go for the 16GB one, since it's only a quid more than the 8GB. Slightly tempted at the 16GB voyager GT per the point of the thread, but an extra £10 for no extra performance is pointless.

Edited by camieabz (Thu 31-May-12 20:22:49)

Buying a fast usb 2.0 stick is the key but not so easy to find
Last week I bought a 8GB Gizmo from Crucial. It gives a write speed of 5.35 MB/sec & read speed of 19.55 MB/sec.

I've just tested it by copying a 2.85GB avi file. Windows 7 reports a write speed of 5.67MB/sec

Just done some tests using Windows Explorer on Win 7 to copy a 3.99Gb file.

I have 2 Corsair drives. One is a Survivor GT 8GB connected on USB2 cable to USB 2 port. The second is a Survivor 16GB USB3 connected on USB3 cable to USB3 port.

Copying to USB from HDD:
16GB - 3:13 mins, reported rate 26.3MB/sec
8GB - 3:27 mins, 22.8MB/sec

Copying from USB to HDD:
16GB - 0:55 mins, 74.4MB/sec
8GB - 2.48 mins, 24.6MB/sec

It was very noticeable that when copying to the USB drives the Explorer progress bar and statistics would 'stall' for 10-20 seconds at a time before resuming. I would speculate that the USB drive buffer was full and couldn't write the data to the memory quickly enough to cope with the data flow from the interface.

Conclusions?

1. For these drives the USB3 version is not significantly quicker writing than the USB2 - though as the USB2 is the 'GT' version it may be faster than a non-GT version would be.
2. Reading performance shows the USB3 to be about 3 times faster.

In reality, as I rarely move files larger than ~500MB, speed issues aren't really relevant.

Any device[s] are only as fast as it's s.l.o.w.e.s.t link.

Nice wee review though. It reminded me to look out my 64GB USB2 Memory Stick.

Handy.

Edited to add: Found.

Edited by deleted (Fri 01-Jun-12 18:31:02)