how much bandwidth is taken up when moving data to a USB key?

[Marzipan]

I'm curious because transferring some 2 - 4 GB files to a couple different flash drives using a USB 3.2 Gen 1 USB A (5Gb/s aka 500MB/s) and a USB 2.0 USB A (480Mb/s, aka 40 - 60MB/s, but since half-duplex, 20 - 30MB/s) port on my Dell G15 5515 gave significantly different results.

128GB Kingston Exodia (non-M) , USB A
1TB Kingston MAX, USB A

SSD-Tester's benchmarking show the Exodia top write speed is 26MB/s while the MAX is about 1GB/s.

Exodia on the USB 3.2 G1 transferred between 11 - 14MB/s while on the USB 2.0 port, transferred between 6 - 8MB/s.
MAX was getting 600MB/s on the USB 3.2 G1 port and 40MB/s on the USB 2.0 port.

What's causing the Exodia drive to have such terrible performance while the MAX got exactly what was expected? I'm curious...

 

[Shadowmeph]

For me it all takes a while its about time for me not what the supposed speeds say on paper hehe

 

[Marzipan]

For me it all takes a while its about time for me not what the supposed speeds say on paper hehe

I'm just curious to know what's going on...why a flash drive isn't performing at speeds it's been benchmarked for. the size of the files I'm transferring are big, so I'm surprised it doesn't hit peak transfer speeds.

 

[Izerous]

Sometimes the formatting (ntfs, exfat, GPT etc) and the allocation sizing can effect read/write performance. Also check if you have drive compression enabled or not. I'm sure there is lots more but that is what is immediately coming to mind.

 

[Marzipan]

Sometimes the formatting (ntfs, exfat, GPT etc) and the allocation sizing can affect read/write performance. Also check if you have drive compression enabled or not. I'm sure there is lots more but that is what is immediately coming to mind.

I'll check that out. whats the best format to have? FAT? exFAT? eNTFS? other?

 

[Izerous]

NTFS + larger allocation sizing I "believe" is the correct approach with the size of files your talking about

 

[CMetaphor]

There's also the fact that regardless of the interface speed, you may be limited to the speed of the Actual flash storage inside the media.

If you want a true comparison test between just the interfaces, maybe stick the same nvme drive in a 3.0 enclosure, then the same nvme in a 3.1 enclosure, then 3.2g2, USB4, etc.