USB 3.0 Flash Drive Roundup
by Zach Throckmorton on July 29, 2011 11:15 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
- Kingston
- USB 3.0
- Patriot
- Gadgets
- ADATA
- Super Talent
- Flash Drive
- Mushkin
Concluding remarks
We had three primary questions in mind when testing these USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 drives. First, how much faster are the USB 3.0 drives than USB 2.0 drives when each is plugged into their respective native port? The benchmarks and real-world scenarios clearly illustrate that USB 3.0 is faster across the board, sometimes by nearly 900%. Second, are USB 3.0 drives faster than USB 2.0 drives when both are plugged into a USB 2.0 port? Though USB 3.0 support is increasingly common on computer systems, USB 2.0 will remain more common and often the only choice for years to come. Our testing indicates that using a USB 3.0 flash drive in a USB 2.0 port yields better results than sticking with a USB 2.0 flash drive. Third, are USB 2.0 flash drives faster when plugged into USB 3.0 ports compared to USB 2.0 ports? Yes, but not by much at all—you'd likely not even notice the difference.
Are USB 3.0 flash drives worth the increased cost compared to USB 2.0 flash drives? We’ve provided performance data, and pricing is always variable depending on sales, rebates, clearances, etc. You might also want to consider how often you lose flash drives! (And how impatient you become watching transfers progress!) Given my personal USB flash drive usage patterns (occasional backups and data transfers), I think the Mushkin Ventura Pro, Kingston DT Ultimate, and Patriot Supersonic USB 3.0 flash drives are particularly appealing. These three strike a good balance between price and performance given today's prices. If you tend to write files rarely and read them frequently, the least expensive USB 3.0 flash drives provide substantially faster reads than USB 2.0 flash drives. However, if you use flash drives more often, such as frequently throughout the day, you’ll want to consider springing for high-performance models like the Patriot Supersonic Magnum and Super Talent RC8.
Finally, we’d like to thank the manufacturers for supplying flash drives for this roundup. We appreciate the samples sent from Patriot, Kingston, AData, Super Talent and Mushkin!
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BadThad - Monday, August 1, 2011 - link
Good job, nice little test!For my purposes a simple 4 or 8MB USB 2.0 drive is fine. Most of the files I need to move around are small and it's only a couple of seconds for read/write ops. As often as I lose these or they just outright die, I can't see spending more than $10 or so on a flash drive.
7Enigma - Monday, August 1, 2011 - link
I assume you mean GB? :) And I'm with you there. I have an 8GB and only occasionally wish I had a 16 or 32 and most of the time it's because I'm too lazy to remove unneeded data.casteve - Monday, August 1, 2011 - link
Thanks for the review. I use thumb drives for archiving data. Create a ZIP or RAR file and place it into a truecrypt folder. With USB 2.0, it's faster to compress using the internal drive and then transfer onto the external drive's truecrypt folder. With 3.0 thumb drives, maybe the transfer rate is fast enough just compress on the fly. It'd be nice to see this proved out.epobirs - Tuesday, August 2, 2011 - link
I've got a Corsair Flash Voyager 16 GB USB 3.0 unit. They've been down around $20 or less AR recently. It's definitely faster (and about 33% longer physically) than its USB 2.0 equivalent but I wonder it would have fallen in this lineup.I carry a bunch of drives for my job and have been retiring 8 GB and smaller units and replacing them with 16 GB models now that the cost per gigabyte is the same, around $1, in promo specials. The Corsair is enough faster that I'll now buy only USB 3.0 drives as good deals appear, preferably 32 GB models.
I might be satisfied when I have a dozen terabytes in my cargo pants pocket but I won't know until I get there. My definition of a decent software and video library to take with me everywhere keeps growing and the cloud does not strike me as a reliable substitute yet or possibly ever.
jagaimo - Wednesday, August 17, 2011 - link
USB 2.0 has a maximum bandwidth of 480Mbits/s, or 60MBytes/s. On a good number of these benchmarks, even the USB 3.0 parts don't hit that speed.e.g., 100MB Sequential Write Performance - Native Interface. The Adata S102 32GB USB3.0 unit only hits 38MB/s. It's still short of the USB 2.0 speed limit.
I guess my point is this... The 480Mb/s bandwidth of USB 2.0 isn't the limiting factor. It seems like it's something else. Is there a reason why we don't see 60MB/s transfers on the 2.0 devices?
MGSsancho - Tuesday, September 6, 2011 - link
That's 640mbs total in both directions. It is really 320mbs in each direction.http://www.usb.org/developers/docs/ see the specs
jonathan1683 - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - link
I would have liked to see 32 GB ones in the mix, but they might be in another article. I have a 16gb flash voyager and it always takes forever reading it initially. Sometimes a couple minutes just to initiate a directory listing. Does anyone know if this is common or maybe I have a defective unit? I notice I don't have this issue on windows XP it's only on win7.tkafafi - Tuesday, March 20, 2012 - link
I think the writeup did a great job of providing the experimental data. I'm just wondering what is the explanation for the results seen on the mixed usb2/usb3 systesm, as they were surprising for sure.Thanks
j7n - Friday, September 20, 2013 - link
Early USB flash memory wasn't "agonizingly slow" in comparison to floppies and rewritable CDs, especially if you account for the time needed to verify the recording on those discs because they were so unreliable. A USB 1.1 port could practically do around 600-700 kB/s, which is at least fifteen times that of a floppy.hizoka - Thursday, December 26, 2013 - link
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