Question What is the best USB drive i can get for my MOBO (3.0 vs 3.1 vs 3.2)

ismmostaar1

Honorable
May 28, 2018
82
9
10,535
My motherboard has 3.2 Gen1 ports, correct me if I'm wrong i understand that 3.0 and 3.1 Gen1 and 3.2 Gen1 they're all has the same transfer speed, does that mean that it does not matter which USB drive I'd buy in terms of speed (as long as it's not 2.0) because getting a 3.0 USB drive won't be any different that getting a 3.2 Gen 1 USB drive? what will be the fastest USB flash drive i can get for my PC to transfer large files from PC to USB as fast as possible? thanks.
 
Last edited:
correct me if I'm wrong i understand that 3.0 and 3.1 Gen1 and 3.2 Gen1 they're all has the same transfer speed
Yes. Max 5 Gbps.
Further reading: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/usb-3-2-explained

what will be the fastest USB flash drive i can get for my PC to transfer files from PC to USB as fast as possible?
For the sake of simplicity, any USB 3.0 drive will do.

But for specific drives,
further reading: https://www.tomshardware.com/best-picks/best-flash-drives

3rd one in the list, Transcend one, has the best write speeds overall. Since it also has type-A port, you can use it as USB 3.0 (5 Gbps) drive, despite it being designed as 10 Gbps drive. So, only limiting factor would be transfer speed, whereby drive write should be faster than transfer speed of USB 3.0, making it the fastest drive you could have.

2nd one in the list, Kingston one, is 2nd best in terms of write speeds. It's cheaper than Transcend one, so, if money is issue, Kingston drive will do just fine as well.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ismmostaar1
could you tell me if copying large files from PC to USB depends more on read or write?
Write.

Write is always slower than Read.

With file transfer from PC to USB drive;
1. PC Reads the file from SSD/HDD
2. PC transfers data over
3. USB drive Writes the data on it

More often that not, it is the Write speed which is the bottleneck. IF write speed is fast enough, then transfer speed is 2nd bottleneck. Read speed almost never is an issue, unless the source drive is slow and/or there is some file corruption issues.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ismmostaar1