Submitted 4 weeks ago by weissbraeu@feddit.org to technology@lemmy.world
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/26/why-are-micro-center-flash-drives-so-slow/
The reality is, many USB 3.0 flash drives aren’t noticeably faster than their USB 2.0 cousins
Yes, especially write. The number of USB sticks faster than SATA (~200 MB/s) on the market is pretty limited.
And not much better in read speed.
One main point is; fast sticks have sizes in the range of USB-SSD-enclosure, for heat dissipation. Faster flash, more parallel connected layers, faster controllers, require that.
Cheap USBs mean cheap read/writes.
I’m not complaining, they give them to me for free.
I’ll bite. I bought a bunch of these and I use them regularly and I’m getting frustrated with the wait times. Seeing this post makes me feel like I’ve got the worst of the worst which is motivating me to consider opening my wallet and moving on. Anyone have recommendations for a cheap, reliable usb drive I can buy in bulk (like 5 to start) in the 64-128gb ballpark that might not break records, but isn’t embarrassingly slow? I’m really partial to the double sided drives that have a USB c option as well, but those are still a little hard to find while meeting the other requirements I’ve listed.
Not cheap, but I just use cheap 256gb sata M.2 drives and a tool less enclosure.
Runs at sata speeds and are cheap. Plus the enclosure supports NVMe so I could run around with a 8TB stick.
I had a 1 TB one I used for the longest time. My only complaint is that it never played well with any of my Linux devices (Steam Deck randomly decided it was done reading it and I had to unplug it and my Bazzite device just locks up)
Lol. Sure. Data loss always sucks so good is important, and I’m prone to loss and theft and don’t have much money so cheap is important. Fast has a low bar for me after dealing with the 10 microcenter drives I bought. Just needs to be a bit faster than those at least.
I got a Sandisk Ultra Dual Drive Go 128GB for ~$15. It’s fast, inexpensive, and does both USB-C and USB-A. Sandisk is one of the best when it comes to reliability, but I’ve only had it for a couple weeks (bought to replace a cheap POS).
Not personally but microcenter does have that 30 day return period so you could buy something name brand from them and then return it if it doesn’t cut it.
I use nvme enclosures. Very fast and very hot. I also got some fikwot ssd based flash drive that’s about the size of a common flash drive. I’ve seen it sustain around 500MB/s very well. Some type of metal enclosure. At this point I’m probably only buying enclosures and small NVME drives or USB sticks where the enclosure is metal and reviews seem solid saying it’s hitting SATA 3+ speeds sustained well
I’ll be your fanboy for the day. I blame Windows for the slow down. If I move a file to or from a flash drive on windows the transfer will slow down to kilobits. This does not happen to me on Linux.
I haven’t tested the drive in question (no Microcenter near me), but I just replaced a cheap drive (from BestBuy) because it took almost an hour to write a 16GB Linux ISO (openSUSE Aeon in this case) on Linux (tried both dd and Impression) and the ISO didn’t actually work. I’ve used smaller ISOs in the past (DVD-size) and those worked, but were pretty slow (took several minutes to write).
So I got a different drive (Sandisk Ultra Go or something, also from BestBuy) and writing took a couple minutes or so, writing at 100+ MB/s, and the ISO worked completely fine. Same OS, same tools, different drive.
It very much depends on the drive.
I keep some in my bag for when people ask to borrow one. It sucks so bad they aren’t tempted to keep it. If they do keep it, they did me a favor
I paid some extra money to finally get a good USB stick that might not have false marketing around it, like 99% of the sticks on market. From the advertised 900MB/s speed, I managed to push only 110. Before you ask - My PC slot supports USB 3.2 2x2 that normally goes way faster on data transfers.
HP 911 Pro
Its a crap shoot I got a 128gb stick and it was slow as shit. I got a 256gb stick from the same shelf and it had decent speeds, I use that one for my softmodded Wii.
Technically complex wardrobes require careful removal.
Activated.
Reporting to rendezvous point.
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Confused_Emus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
The USB sticks that they frequently give away for free with other purchases have low performance? Color me shocked, I guess?