Painfully Slow Thumb Drive

[Huntn]

On my MBP I’m in the final stages of transferring a 4GB file of archived receipts to a thumb drive. It only took about 20 hours. Is this normal? I might look to an SSD in the future, but I was attracted to the thumb drive due to the low cost. This data is backed up, but this drive is designed for my wife’s convenience if I were to unexpectedly become incapacitated for any reason. Thoughts? Thanks!

 

[theSeb]

It depends on the thumb drive, but, no, it is not normal with a decent thumb drive. However, when you say archived, do you mean that all of them were archived to one file or were they archived individually? That makes a huge difference. Even SSDs struggle copying lots of small files.

I don't have 4 GBs of archived receipts on hand to replicate your test, but I used a 6 GB Mojave installer, which is a reasonable facsimile of many files in one archive. Using the Corsair Flash Voyager X2 that I have lying around on my desk it took about 2-3 minutes. To be fair the initial estimated time remaining was reported as 7 hours for the first few seconds of the operation.

This was somewhat pricey compared to the usual bargain bin ones, but it also probably about 4 years old, if not older.

Flash Voyager® Slider X2 USB 3.0 128GB USB Drive

Flash Voyager Slider X2 is a compact USB 3.0 drive that doesn’t sacrifice size for performance.

www.corsair.com

(Also I only used a 32 GB one and the read / write specs are lower with lower capacities)

 

[velocityg4]

Definitely not normal. My preferred drive is the Samsung Fit Plus. It's fastest I've owned. Though not the fastest out there.

It's fast enough to install Windows or macOS in ten to fifteen minutes. It's also fast enough for transferring data on site in most instances, about 10 MB/s sustained write. Before having to resort to an external HDD.

Most of the amazing speed claims are junk. As they usually slow down after an initial burst.

Most of the good drives are still USB A. So, you'll need a USB C adapter if you want a good selection.

 

[Huntn]

It depends on the thumb drive, but, no, it is not normal with a decent thumb drive. However, when you say archived, do you mean that all of them were archived to one file or were they archived individually? That makes a huge difference. Even SSDs struggle copying lots of small files.

I don't have 4 GBs of archived receipts on hand to replicate your test, but I used a 6 GB Mojave installer, which is a reasonable facsimile of many files in one archive. Using the Corsair Flash Voyager X2 that I have lying around on my desk it took about 2-3 minutes. To be fair the initial estimated time remaining was reported as 7 hours for the first few seconds of the operation.

This was somewhat pricey compared to the usual bargain bin ones, but it also probably about 4 years old, if not older.

Flash Voyager® Slider X2 USB 3.0 128GB USB Drive

Flash Voyager Slider X2 is a compact USB 3.0 drive that doesn’t sacrifice size for performance.

www.corsair.com

(Also I only used a 32 GB one and the read / write specs are lower with lower capacities)

Archieved, hundreds (over a thousand or two?) of single scanned bills in pdf format.

Definitely not normal. My preferred drive is the Samsung Fit Plus. It's fastest I've owned. Though not the fastest out there.

It's fast enough to install Windows or macOS in ten to fifteen minutes. It's also fast enough for transferring data on site in most instances, about 10 MB/s sustained write. Before having to resort to an external HDD.

Most of the amazing speed claims are junk. As they usually slow down after an initial burst.

Most of the good drives are still USB A. So, you'll need a USB C adapter if you want a good selection.

Thanks to both of you. This is a cheap thumb drive, 20 Freak’n hours slow. Next time I’ll shop for better.

 

[Fishrrman]

Try another drive.
Make sure the one you get is USB3.

 

[BigMcGuire]

I’ve had this happen with super cheap thumb drives. I’ve had a few melt when I tried to transfer a large number of files. Usually zipping them up into one file helps but. Yeah. If you pay less than $40 for a thumb drive they usually suck pretty bad for actual usage. Haven’t bought one in a while.

 

[ght56]

I agree something is definitely wrong. Most flash drives have terrible write speeds, but the speeds you are getting suggests something is wrong. If you are looking for a flash drive that can replace a SSD to some extent, there are some out there that can sustain over 300 MB/s. However, most are large in their physical size as they use SSD controllers and need larger aluminum bodies to dissipate the heat (to date, AFAIK they are all USB-A).