USB 3.0 speed testing??

Hi all,

So my friend has an older computer with USB 2.0.. It does take forever to transfer files to and fro..

I think I last saw him getting 29mb/second...

When I transfer files via my Laptop which has USB 3.0 I seem to only be getting 39mb/second.. with some usb drives (pny 32 gig etc..)

what gives? that is not USB 3.0 speed correct? how to gain the benefit of USB 3.0 speed?

I do transfer files around 60-70mb/second with External hard drives.. so is that correct? maybe it's just cheap usb drives..

USB only specifies the speed of the interface between the device and computer. But in most cases the limiting factor is going to be the performance of the drive itself. Many drives, including those labeled "USB 3", will have performance little or no better than USB 2 speeds.

29 MB/s is about right for USB 2. Flash drives vary widely in performance.

In addition to LMiller7 comments...

Next to the hardware and the associated drivers' limitation, the actual transfer speed for USB3 interface also depends on the OS, the number of files being transferred and the size of the files. Here's my USB2 test results for data transfer speed difference between different file sizes:



USB3 data transfers would be greater, but ratio between small vs. large files would be about the same. For that matter, even data transfers between HDDs are pretty much the same:



USB3 drives, both HDD/SSD and flash drives, can be fast, as long as your internal drive is at least as fast or faster as the external drive. You could also test it with AS SSD Benchmark that tests just the external drive; my OCZ Vertex external SSD (64GBs) connected to USB3 interface:



Connecting the same drive to an internal SATA3 port, the benchmark numbers pretty much tripled. Sorry, but I couldn't find my images for actual USB3 transfer rates for different external devices...

Hey what USB are you copying to in the top picture that gets 104MB/second??!

I want to buy that usb stick.. I've never seen speeds like that with the USB's Ive bought..