USB Flash Write Speed Differences

[landolphe]

I have several USB flash drives. When copying from my Mac to the USB, some drives write very quickly; others are dramatically slower. I have not formatted any of the drives and am running OS 10.5.8 PPC. None of my drives were labeled as USB 2.0. or 3.0.

 

[drtweak]

Look at the plastic on the inside of the thumb drives. Most USB 3.0 drives will be blue while 2.0 is black or white also different USB 3.0 drives may write faster or slower depending on what class of flash is used in them.

 

[landolphe]

Look at the plastic on the inside of the thumb drives. Most USB 3.0 drives will be blue while 2.0 is black or white also different USB 3.0 drives may write faster or slower depending on what class of flash is used in them.

I don't know what speed the USB port on my iBook G4 is: 2.0 or 3.0 or 1.0. What happens if I run a drive labeled 2.0 or 3.0 and my port is not at same speed? I have had best speed from PNY devices, worst from Lexar, which writes at a very small fraction of the speed of the PNYs.

 

[glamdringfh]

USB 3.0 is backwards compatible with USB 2.0, so even if you have a 3.0 USB drive and plug it into a USB 2.0 port it will work fine, it will just be slower than if you had plugged it into a USB 3.0 port.

Your iBook G4 uses USB 2.0 ports.

As drtweak already mentioned, there are varying qualities of USB drives. Some USB 2.0 drives will read/ write faster than others depending on the quality of their internal components.

 

[jsmithepa]

May not be even a 2 vs 3 issue. Check out Tom's own USB flash test benchmarks, not all flash run at the same speed. READ.