Fast USB 3.0 Flash Drive - Much Slower on USB 2

nb- · 11 Apr 2013 at 12:54

I am looking for a fast USB flash drive. The SanDisk Cruzer Extreme USB 3.0 gets a lot of recommendations, but I have also seen comments saying its very slow on USB 2.0, with transfer speeds a long way short of saturating the USB 2 connection. As it will be used quite a lot on USB 2 this could be an issue.

Has anyone here got experience of transfer speeds on USB 2, is this really a problem?

Sliver · 11 Apr 2013 at 13:13

I bought this one a while ago :

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FL-033-CS

It's fantastic for my needs. It's also fully USB2 compatible. I use it mainly for transferring large video files from my PC to my TV. It's very fast and has great build quality.

Broken Hope · 11 Apr 2013 at 14:00

Sliver said:
I bought this one a while ago :

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FL-033-CS

It's fantastic for my needs. It's also fully USB2 compatible. I use it mainly for transferring large video files from my PC to my TV. It's very fast and has great build quality.

Those write speeds are horrible though compared to the Sandisk Extreme.

The Sandisk extreme has no issues with USB2.

Sliver · 11 Apr 2013 at 14:25

Write speeds may be a little slower, (horrible is the wrong word) but in real world performance, you're not going to notice much difference. What I love about the Corsair Survivor is it's build quality. It's a very nice device to use and extremely resilient to any accidents you might have with it. My last drive was a plastic Kingston and it was pants.

Broken Hope · 11 Apr 2013 at 15:32

40MB/s compared to 190MB/s is horrible so yes I used the correct word.

Sliver · 11 Apr 2013 at 18:41

Broken Hope said:
40MB/s compared to 190MB/s is horrible so yes I used the correct word.

They are not correct figures. For a comparison to my Corsair Survivor 32Gb, we'd be looking at 110Mb/s and not 190Mb/s. Which like I said, in real world performance, would only be noticeable on massive files. The few seconds you would actually save transferring small to medium files, which is what most of us do on a regular basis, is minimal and not an issue. So again, horrible is not the right word.

http://www.everythingusb.com/sandisk-extreme-usb-3.0-flash-drive-21622.html

All currently shipping Extreme USB 3.0 flash drives are rated by SanDisk as having 190MB/s read speeds. To put that number in perspective, that's about 600% faster than the speediest USB 2.0 flash drives we've set hands on in the past, which speaks volumes for why you should upgrade to USB 3.0 if you haven't already. If you're lucky enough to have a USB host controller that allows for supersized BOT transfers (aka Turbo Mode or XFast USB), you can boost the read speeds even higher as my benchmarks will show.
Write speeds on the Extreme flash drives varies by model. For the 64GB and 32GB versions, this is 170MB/s and 110MB/s respectively, while the smallest 16GB model is only rated for 55MB/s.

nb- · 12 Apr 2013 at 12:35

Thank you for your input people. Sandisk I think it is since it looks smaller, fast and more convenient.

This is to replace my current buffalo 4GB USB stick that lives on my key ring which has gone wrong, most bizarrely, all that happens when I plug it in is it says the USB devices has malfunctioned, and it gets hot!