M1 Mini-slow USB write speed

[blueglide]

I am getting a slow USB write speed. I am using a PNY 3.0 128 Attache Turbo. I have 67 gigs of FLAC files transferring to it. It took about 16 hours for the transfer from the Mini to the thumb drive with the drive plugged into the Mini's USB port. My powered USB hub arrived and tried the transfer with it and it took just as long. When I copy to the M1 from the USB it takes about 40 minutes. It is also very fast when transferring between two Samsung T7's. The thumb drive is formatted to Exfat and I disabled indexing on the thumb drive. That sped it up to 5 hours via the hub and 10 hours in the back of the Mini

Any ideas to make this quicker? Should i get a USB 3.1 drive?

Thank you

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[MacCheetah3]

Are you using it solely with Macs? If so, I would suggest going with an Apple file format.

I have a 256 GB Patriot Supersonic Rage 2 USB 3.0 thumb drive that I formatted in exFAT to transfer some files to a PC. Initial copy time estimate creeped to over an hour for 5.7 GB of data. It was moving very slowly, 0.1 to 1 MB/s, then had some bursts, next slowed again before one final burst, which I assume was for a large (>500 MB) file.

I know this drive is fast on my Mac, reaching at least 200 MB/s that I recall*. However, that was with HFS+ and, if I'm remembering correctly, even FAT32. So, I think, exFAT is your problem, especially if your 67 GB of data is hundreds or thousands of smaller files.

* The same drive typically is stuck at USB 2.0 on my Windows 10 PC, even after a lot of troubleshooting.

 

[Fishrrman]

I have a similar PNY drive, although mine may be USB2 instead of USB3.

In any case, the actual write speeds I seem to get from it are mediocre at best.

My impression (from my modestly limited experience with USB flash drives), is that flash drives almost never perform at the level claimed by the manufacturer.

What you could try:
- as MacCheetah suggested, reformat the drive for the Mac OS. I would recommend HFS+ (Mac OS extended with journaling enabled, GUID partition format).
- try running a speed test on the newly-formatted drive. Blackmagic Speed Test (free at the App Store) might do.

 

[blueglide]

Unfortunately, I can use Apple format as the thumb drives will be used in the cars. The Apple format was about 2 hours quicker than ExFat at 3 hours quicker than FAT32. So I will stick with ExFat. I did find Blackmagic Disk Speedtest in the App store and has been helpful

All in all I won't be moving these files often if ever again. I was just curious. Since I'm one of them weird people that do not always bring my phone with me I want an alternative to listening to the radio. So I made giant playlists to keep on the thumb drives.

I ordered a Samsung FIT Plus 3.1 usb to see if it will be quicker.

 

[blueglide]

- try running a speed test on the newly-formatted drive. Blackmagic Speed Test (free at the App Store) might do.

Thanks, just found that last night!

 

[blueglide]

Some tests with Blackmagic.

 

[MacCheetah3]

Most of those benches seem on par. The T7 write looks low to me, though I've never used one or seen tests.

Anyway... The PNY thumb drive does appear to be a slower performer. If you look at the reviews here...

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...Your values aren't far off.

So, based on some quick calculations, it'd require about two to three hours to write 67 GB of FLAC music files.