Discussion Post your USB Flash drive performance new vs. old

[igor_kavinski]

Just got a PNY 1TB USB 3.1 flash drive and this is the transfer graph (exFAT):



It was continuously oscillating between 13 to 24 MB/s like it would get to the top and someone would kick it down.

Weird. Anyway, that's better than sub-10 MB/s which is what I got with a 512GB drive.

Will post again in a few months when there's at least a 100GB of data on it.

 

[Hail The Brain Slug]

I can't believe they still make drives like this in 2025.

With a write speed of ~18MB/s it would take near 15 hours to write 1TB, the size of the drive. That should be criminal.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I'm kinda amazed that it's working at over 5 MB/s with penta-level flash NAND. I was super expecting it to do that after my horrible experience with the 512GB one. Maybe they got enough complaints about the 512GB one that they decided to not repeat the same mistake.

I tried copying an ISO to the 512GB one (it's about half full and same family of drive with exact same physical shape and size):



Same behavior except minimum was 4 MB/s and max is shown above so the 1TB is a definite improvement. And before anyone asks, yes, the 512GB one is also using exFAT.

 

[Shmee]

Yeah I don't trust those drives really, better to put an NVMe SSD in an external enclosure. I have my old Samsung 950 Pro in an Orico enclosure, I use it to boot from to install stuff with Ventoy.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Orico enclosure

No can do due to the larger size (drive gets transported between home and office). Plus, I've had random issues with enclosures before. Would rather get a proper external drive if I have to but those are more expensive. So this 1TB USB is an acceptable compromise as long as the speed doesn't deteriorate.

 

[Shmee]

They really aren't that big. And the cable is detachable.

 

[igor_kavinski]

They really aren't that big. And the cable is detachable.

I have two of those. I still prefer the tiny USB flash drive

OK, I guess I should come out and explain why I prefer not to use them. They are both metallic. The finishing is kinda the type that I dislike touching. I don't think there is a plastic enclosure available and it would be expensive anyway (these NVMe enclosures are always something like $30 locally for me). And I don't like the enclosure dangling from my work PC's USB port.