Flash drive not running at hi-speed

[Zzed]

I just recently got my wife a new Sandisk Mini Cruzer 128MB flash drive for her birthday. While it seems to function fine, I wanted to test it's speed, seeing as how it says it's fully USB 2.0 Hi-Speed capable (i.e. 60 MB/s). Using the "file system benchmark" of SiSoft Sandra 2004, it resulted in an average throughput of a little over 3 MB/s. This is 20x less than I expected!! I then verified this by transferring 100MB of MP3 files to the drive and noted that it took a little over 1 sec/file.

Here's a quick rundown of my system:

P4 2.6C
512MB PC3200
120G SATA HDD
Abit IS7 mobo
Win2k SP4

USB Devices
Scanner
Keyboard
Wireless Mouse
4 Port USB 1.1 Hub
Various unused peripheral cables (i.e. PDA, digital camera, etc)

USB 2.0 is enabled in the BIOS and I have a dedicated USB 2.0 extension cable plugged directly into an onboard USB port (not the hub) for the flash drive.

Any reason why I am not getting at least 40 MB/s?

-=Zzed=-

[Leoslocks]

I do not know if there are any flash media that can read or write that fast . I did purchase some high speed CF for my camera. I will benchmark it when I get a chance.

I did bench a Nikon (Lexar 8x) 16 meg CF card. I did not see any reference to "Average throughput" in Sandra 04. Here are my results.

SiSoftware Sandra

Test Status
SMP Test : No
Total Test Threads : 1
SMT Test : No
Dynamic MP/MT Load Balance : No
Processor Affinity : No

Combined Device Index
Combined index : 760 operation(s)/min

512B Files Test
Read Performance : 7518 operation(s)/min (63 kb/sec)
Write Performance : 500 operation(s)/min (4 kb/sec)
Combined index : 1137 operation(s)/min

32kB Files Test
Read Performance : 1561 operation(s)/min (833 kb/sec)
Write Performance : 403 operation(s)/min (215 kb/sec)
Combined index : 727 operation(s)/min

256kB Files Test
Read Performance : 226 operation(s)/min (964 kb/sec)
Write Performance : 107 operation(s)/min (457 kb/sec)
Combined index : 157 operation(s)/min

2MB Files Test
Read Performance : 29 operation(s)/min (990 kb/sec)
Write Performance : 17 operation(s)/min (580 kb/sec)
Combined index : 22 operation(s)/min

Drive
Total Size : 15MB
Free Space : 12MB, 100%
Cluster Size : 4kB

[Leoslocks]

I benched a 40x Lexar 256 meg card today. It is not to swift in the Sandra benchmark except for the Write Performance in the 512B files test.

SiSoftware Sandra

Test Status
SMP Test : No
Total Test Threads : 1
SMT Test : No
Dynamic MP/MT Load Balance : No
Processor Affinity : No

Combined Device Index
Combined index : 603 operation(s)/min

512B Files Test
Read Performance : 7523 operation(s)/min (63 kb/sec)
Write Performance : 371 operation(s)/min (3166 bytes/sec)
Combined index : 863 operation(s)/min

32kB Files Test
Read Performance : 1581 operation(s)/min (843 kb/sec)
Write Performance : 320 operation(s)/min (171 kb/sec)
Combined index : 614 operation(s)/min

256kB Files Test
Read Performance : 227 operation(s)/min (969 kb/sec)
Write Performance : 89 operation(s)/min (380 kb/sec)
Combined index : 140 operation(s)/min

2MB Files Test
Read Performance : 28 operation(s)/min (956 kb/sec)
Write Performance : 16 operation(s)/min (546 kb/sec)
Combined index : 22 operation(s)/min

Drive
Total Size : 246MB
Free Space : 221MB, 100%
Cluster Size : 8kB

[wrathchild_67]

The max transfer rates for USB 2.0 flash media is about 16MB/s (which has nothing to do with the maximum speed of the USB bus). The average transfer rates for USB 2.0 is around 7MB/s for reads/writes. You'll be lucky to get anything that does above 10MB/s. And if you do find something that fast, you'll certainly pay for that speed.