USB 3 Memmory stick so slow ?

[Daffy D]

Doing a comparison test I found that the USB3 memory sticks were a lot slower in loading files than my Seagate Slim Portable drive which is USB3 but not SSD.

Examples:-

Loading a 1.52 GB movie file:-

Seagate Slim Portable drive 500GB. (Not SSD) ------ 16 seconds
USB3 Kingston Data memmory stick 32GB ------------- 1min 50seconds
USB3 Kingston Date memmory stick 16GB ------------- 2min 50 seconds

Loading a 2.08 GB movie file:-

Seagate Slim Portable drive 500GB. (Not SSD) ------ 27 seconds
USB3 Kingston Data memmory stick 32GB ------------- 2min 43 seconds
USB3 Kingston Date memmory stick 16GB ------------- 3min 53 seconds

I would have thought that the memory sticks being solid state would be a lot faster than the Seagate drive which has the old fashioned spinning platters.

Any comments?

[Chicog]

I'm assuming your PC has USB 3.0 ports and not 2.0?

[RichCor]

Flash memory have different speeds based on interface type, package specifications and materials used in the manufacturing process.

MaximumPC.com earlier this year published an article titled Fastest USB Thumb Drive

with the results on four USB 3.0 64GB units posting the following benchmarks:

Then there is also THIS:

From Wikipedia: USB Flash Drive File transfer speeds

USB flash drives usually specify their read and write speeds in megabytes per second (MB/s); read speed is usually faster. These speeds are for optimal conditions; real-world speeds are usually slower. In particular, circumstances that often lead to speeds much lower than advertised are transfer (particularly writing) of many small files rather than a few very large ones, and mixed reading and writing to the same device.

In a typical well-conducted review of a number of high-performance USB 3.0 drives, a drive that could read large files at 68 MB/s and write at 46 MB/s, could only manage 14 MB/s and 0.3 MB/s with many small files. When combining streaming reads and writes the speed of another drive, that could read at 92 MB/s and write at 70 MB/s, was 8 MB/s. These differences differ radically from one drive to another; some drives could write small files at over 10% of the speed for large ones. The examples given are chosen to illustrate extremes.

Many Flash Memory devices are sold based on their CLASS type, or Read and Write speeds.

Wikipedia: Comparison of Memory Cards

[lopburi3]

I'm assuming your PC has USB 3.0 ports and not 2.0?

Even when they have USB3 ports it often is not all of them so you have to be careful which port is used.

[Chicog]

That's all very good, but if you stuff a USB 3.0 drive in a USB 2.0 port, you're not going to get USB 3.0 speeds.

http://www.kingston.com/en/usb/usb_30

[Daffy D]

Thank you both Chicog and lopburi3 for your concerns.

Yes I have USB3 ports on the computer and yes I can tell the difference. The USB3 are colored blue and if I do use a USB2 port by mistake a warning will come up advising me that I would get better speeds using a USB3 port.

To eliminate any possible variation of different ports I used the same port for all the tests.

Even if I had used a USB2 port I would have thought that a solid state memory stick would still be faster than the old spinning platters.

[ETatBKK]

while you are using Kingston USB, you could check the read/write speed specifications on their website. there are different speed specifications per product.

www.kingston.com/en/usb/personal_business

few USB 3.0 drives are faster than others.

cheers

EDIT : check DataTraveller comparison. I also bought a slow one by not checking this comparison in advance.

Edited June 8, 2014 by ETatBKK

[h90]

Flash memory have different speeds based on interface type, package specifications and materials used in the manufacturing process.

MaximumPC.com earlier this year published an article titled Fastest USB Thumb Drive

with the results on four USB 3.0 64GB units posting the following benchmarks:

USB_3_Flash_Speed_Comparison.jpg

Then there is also THIS:

From Wikipedia: USB Flash Drive File transfer speeds

USB flash drives usually specify their read and write speeds in megabytes per second (MB/s); read speed is usually faster. These speeds are for optimal conditions; real-world speeds are usually slower. In particular, circumstances that often lead to speeds much lower than advertised are transfer (particularly writing) of many small files rather than a few very large ones, and mixed reading and writing to the same device.

In a typical well-conducted review of a number of high-performance USB 3.0 drives, a drive that could read large files at 68 MB/s and write at 46 MB/s, could only manage 14 MB/s and 0.3 MB/s with many small files. When combining streaming reads and writes the speed of another drive, that could read at 92 MB/s and write at 70 MB/s, was 8 MB/s. These differences differ radically from one drive to another; some drives could write small files at over 10% of the speed for large ones. The examples given are chosen to illustrate extremes.

Many Flash Memory devices are sold based on their CLASS type, or Read and Write speeds.

Wikipedia: Comparison of Memory Cards

There are also compatibility issues. I am doing backups with a Software on USB Memorystick and the loading time vary a lot between different computer if the computer has different USB controller than it can be half the time on one controller to the other.

That is for USB 2 but I think the same thing is for USB 3 specially as there are a couple different standards.

[Chicog]

Maybe check if there are any firmware updates for your PC.

Sent from my SM-N900T using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

[RichCor]

Daffy D,

Have you checked the published speed specs of your USB Seagate hard drive and Kingston flash memory products? What to they say?

[JSixpack]

Commonly sold flashdrives are pretty slow, actually. If you want speed, you have to spend more and upgrade to a category like SanDisk Extreme. I only buy those now.

[h90]

Commonly sold flashdrives are pretty slow, actually. If you want speed, you have to spend more and upgrade to a category like SanDisk Extreme. I only buy those now.

AND keep your fingers from these sold openly in Thailand, they are often fakes.....

Invadeit should be a safe source.

[Daffy D]

_{I only use the memory stick for watching downloaded movies and TV programs on the telly so the speed is not really important. It just made me curious when memory stick was so much slower to load a movie than the Seagate drive.}

_{Didn't realize there was so much difference in the various sticks, seems like SanDisk Extreme is the way to go for speed but at what a price.}

_{Think I'll just stick with the normal speeds.}

[astral]

Leaving usb3 aside there can be dramatic differences in memory stick speeds

I have a freebie from HP and it is as slow as a snail....

[Langsuan Man]

_{I only use the memory stick for watching downloaded movies and TV programs on the telly so the speed is not really important. It just made me curious when memory stick was so much slower to load a movie than the Seagate drive.}

_{Didn't realize there was so much difference in the various sticks, seems like SanDisk Extreme is the way to go for speed but at what a price.}

_{Think I'll just stick with the normal speeds.}

May not make much difference in watching but sure makes a lot of difference when transferring the data to the USB stick from the computer

[Daffy D]

May not make much difference in watching but sure makes a lot of difference when transferring the data to the USB stick from the computer

As you say no difference in watching just in loading up the USB Stick from the computer,

3 or 4 minutes doesn't sound like much but it can seem like a long time when you are just sitting there waiting for the file to load onto the USB Stick.

[kriswillems]

A kingston datatraveller G3 100, 32 GB, USB3.0 memory stick has a write rate of 10MB/s.

So, if you write 1500MB (1.5GB) you need 150 s.

So, the memory stick you bought is actually faster than the specifications of one of the most sold USB 3.0 memory sticks (in Thailand).

Please remember that a memory stick is not an SSD. An SSD would be faster than a hard drive but most memory sticks are not.

In case you like kingston, buy a stick with hyperX in the name. They are about 10 times faster.

Or you could buy 32 GB FLASH DRIVE SANDISK ULTRA USB 3.0, which is about 8 times faster. It's reasonably priced, about 590B, so only 200B more expensive than the cheap/slow memory sticks.

Edited June 12, 2014 by kriswillems