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How to quickly test read / write speeds of USB Flash Drives

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c627627

c(n*199780) Senior Member
Joined
Feb 18, 2002
• HD_Speed 1.7.1.90 looks all right: http://www.steelbytes.com/?mid=20

But when you do a write test on the USB Flash Drive, you need to reformat it afterwards for some reason.


• Check Flash 1.16 does not make me reformat the drive after a write test. So maybe it's better?


http://mikelab.kiev.ua/index_en.php?page=PROGRAMS/chkflsh_en


• ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46
What is the official download page for that program?

It looks good but how do you actually set it up to just tell you what the USB Flash drive write/read speed is. Others seem much easier to use and more straight forward.


I also looked at these three but found them to be limited in their free or trial versions or unclear and more difficult to use then the ones mentioned above.
• CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskMark/index-e.html
• Flash Memory Toolkit 2.0.1 http://www.flashmemorytoolkit.com/download.html
• HD Tune 4.61 http://www.hdtune.com/download.html
 
OK. so you have to register to download it, is it free?

Look how Check Flash 1.16.2 displayed Read speed as 20.68 MB/s and Write speed as 10.59 MB/s. Now look at ATTO 2.46 on the right.


Is I/O Comparison supposed to be selected? How high of a transfer size should be selected? Which total length should be selected?
 

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I have a dual boot. The write speeds seem to be higher under Windows XP vs. Windows 7.
 

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The same Kingston DataTraveler G3 8GB drive only formatted to NTFS.

NTFS seems faster on both Windows XP and Windows 7 vs FAT32 screenshots above.



 

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USB 3.0 on Windows 7 vs Windows XP:


 

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So Read speeds are three times faster (at most) on USB 3 vs USB 2.


...and Write speeds are not even twice as fast on USB 3.0, maybe 66% faster?
 
The reason you see those results on ATTO are because of the units they use. USB flash drives are not high i/o pieces therefore your smaller file sizes will not transfer as fast as the larger ones.

This is the same for SSD's.
 
I see. So what size single large file should be used to get better comparison results?
 
ATTO just seems to be more detailed in what files sizes it runs. Not sure how Check Flash works or what file size, but I would imagine those results are all anyone would want to know about a flash drive.
 
All right. I am now trying to find out if this is the real world situation as experienced by other users:
So Read speeds are three times faster (at most) on USB 3 vs USB 2.


...and Write speeds are not even twice as fast on USB 3.0, maybe 66% faster?

I knew USB 3.0 is not 10 times faster than USB 2.0 in real life, but I guess I expected at least twice the write speeds and more than 3x the read speeds.
 
Hm, what a big difference b/w USB 3.0 Flash Drive vs USB 3.0 External Drive:
 

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All right. I am now trying to find out if this is the real world situation as experienced by other users:


I knew USB 3.0 is not 10 times faster than USB 2.0 in real life, but I guess I expected at least twice the write speeds and more than 3x the read speeds.

Well not many drives out there currently that are pushing USB3.0 limits either. Anyone got a nice dongle cable for a SSD to test out speeds? That would be the true tester of USB3.0. I got a portable HDD that tops out around 100MB/sec though not sure if its the drive or the connection.

But as you said, 10x doubt it, 5x speed is probably more likely so around 150-175MB/sec.

Edit: Dang missed your last post but yup around those speeds :)
 
There have been a few tests like that (with SSD's on USB3) and they are smoking fast. The 10x #'s were the theoretical limits. Due to overhead and such it will be less. But a modern SSD should saturate that bandwidth. ;)
 
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