SanDisk thumb drive transfers extremely slow

[Doug828]

I just received my new MacBook Air 2020 yesterday. I mainly use it for photo and music management. I also purchased the SanDisk dual USB-c thumb drive. I like to make backups weekly. However, it is transferring extremely slow. About 1 hour to transfer 10gb. On my old MacBook Pro, I used an external hard drive that transferred about 200gb in one hour

is this because I chose the i3 processor? Or are thumb drives just that slow?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

[deeddawg]

What's the rated write speed of that thumbdrive? Or what's the specific model # / product page so we can see?

Not everything with a USBC connector is fast.

CPU has nothing to do with it in this case.

 

[Doug828]

The full name is Ultra Dual Drive Go USB Type C
It says it’s USB 3.1 Gen 1 With 150mb/s read speeds. Nothing is said about write speeds

 

[deeddawg]

If I've located the correct model on Amazon the reviews suggest tested sequential write speeds in the ~40-46MB/s range and ~2MB/s for random writes.

So I wouldn't expect a whole lot of speed out of it. You may wish to consider a portable SSD.

SanDisk 64GB Ultra Dual Drive Go USB Type-C Flash Drive, Black - SDDDC3-064G-G46

Looking for storage that works across your USB Type-C and Type-A devices? Whether you’re taking amazing photos of your latest adventure or creating content in the office, the SanDisk Ultra Dual Drive Go is the 2-in-1 flash drive that lets you easily move files between USB Type-C smartphone, table...

www.amazon.com

 

[chrfr]

The full name is Ultra Dual Drive Go USB Type C
It says it’s USB 3.1 Gen 1 With 150mb/s read speeds. Nothing is said about write speeds

Many USB 3 flash drives get extremely hot when writing and then slow themselves down significantly.

 

[Doug828]

Thanks! I was tricked by all the positive reviews

I also didn’t realize thumb drives are generally slower than SSD

 

[mick2]

Thanks! I was tricked by all the positive reviews

I also didn’t realize thumb drives are generally slower than SSD

This is normal behaviour for any common thumbdrive (there are a few that are faster but they're rarer & much more expensive); not just an issue with the sandisk. As well as being much slower, thumbdrives also use a much cruder form of flash storage than SSD drives which is rated for far fewer write cycles than a true SSD.

For that reason I wouldnt recommend using a thumbdrive for full machine or frequent/important data backups.

 

[SaMMyS]

This is normal behaviour for any common thumbdrive (there are a few that are faster but they're rarer & much more expensive); not just an issue with the sandisk. As well as being much slower, thumbdrives also use a much cruder form of flash storage than SSD drives which is rated for far fewer write cycles than a true SSD.

For that reason I wouldnt recommend using a thumbdrive for full machine or frequent/important data backups.

I got the same USB stick, and it runs just fine on windows. However it runs sooooo slow and hot on MacOS Big Sur. It seems there's something wrong between MacOS and the USB drive, and causes the stick overheats itself and thus become slow.