Testing flash drives: how to find out the real speed and volume. Testing flash drives: how to find out the real speed and volume How to determine which usb port 3.0
USB drives, or, to put it simply, flash drives, have firmly entered our lives, and it is difficult to imagine a person who does not use this device. However, the choice of a USB drive for many is determined only by design and volume, some who have already encountered the problem of slow recording also look at speed. We propose to understand the differences between flash drives in terms of parameters that are less often paid attention to, but which are the main ones for USB drives.
The very first USB drives designed to transfer and store digital information appeared in 2000. Due to their compactness compared to other media, today they have practically replaced CDs and other less technologically advanced storage media. Now such a device is perceived as a standard thing: many wear them as key rings or give them as a useful souvenir, for example, for the New Year.
The devices in question are produced by many well-known and not so famous manufacturers (Adata, Kingston, Apacer, Silicon Power, Corsair, Transcend, TeamGroup, Sandisk, Lexar), so often a well-known manufacturer for the user is a guarantee of quality and allows you to concentrate on design when choosing. There are many fakes from China on the market (especially in online stores), which, while claiming some characteristics, do not correspond to them in reality.
All this leaves its mark on the choice of the consumer. The development of online storage makes it possible in many situations to do without the use of flash drives and have access to data anywhere, but they are not always able to replace a physical storage medium.
The volume of a USB disk is a key indicator for the price (Yandex.Market data):
4 GB - 180 rubles
8 GB -190 rubles
16 GB - 270 rubles
32 GB - 500 rubles
64 GB - 1000 rubles
128 GB - 2900 rubles
256 GB - 11000 rubles
In the listed information, only the volume and the average price were taken into account. Many manufacturers do not list the read and write speed for the media.
For SD- (micro-SD) cards, the packaging often indicates the class of the device, which determines only the write speed:
Class 2 - (write speed not less than 2 MB/s)
Сlass 4 - (write speed not less than 4 MB/s)
Сlass 6 - (write speed not less than 6 MB/s)
Сlass 10 - (write speed not less than 10 MB/s)
For a USB drive, an important parameter is the USB standard (2.0 or 3.0), which determines the potential capabilities of the device. USB stands for "Universal Serial Bus". USB 3.0 (SuperSpeed USB) has the potential for very high speed and performance.
USB 2.0 in theory should have a speed of 480 Mbps, but in reality it does not reach even 250 Mbps. USB 3.0 can reach a theoretical maximum speed of 4.8Gbps, ten times the speed of USB 2.0.
A 16 GB USB 2.0 flash drive costs about 270 rubles, a USB 3.0 of the same size costs 370 rubles.
The USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 standards are largely compatible with each other. This means that by inserting a USB 3.0 flash drive into a 2.0 slot (a USB 2.0 flash drive into a 3.0 slot), it is quite possible to read and write data, however, the speed will be limited either by the slot or by the drive.
Visually, drives and connectors of the 3.0 standard are distinguished by the presence of blue plastic inside.
How can you independently check the reality of the volume declared on the package and the speed characteristics of a USB drive? Free programs will allow you to do this, the work with which is quite simple.
The first h2testw program (link) will allow you to estimate the actual volume, this is especially important if you purchase media in Chinese online stores, where the seller often tries to deceive the buyer.
This program does not require installation. We run it and see the following:
By default, the program language is German, so if you are not strong in this language, you should set the switch to English at the top:
We leave all the other switches in their places, press the "Vrite + Verify" button to start the test, we see the following picture:
Testing takes a long time, the program writes information in blocks and reads it after writing. An 8 GB USB drive will be tested for about 40 minutes. As a result, we will see the following report:
And this is what the result looks like for a fake drive, where the manufacturer stated the volume is 64 GB, but in fact we have 7.4 GB:
Of course, in this case, it is advisable to demonstrate the test results to the seller and return your money.
This program leaves files on the tested disk that must be deleted manually:
The second CrystalDiskMark program will allow you to evaluate the speed characteristics of the drive.
USB 3.0 technology appeared in 2008. Nowadays, all new computers or laptops come with USB 3.0 support. But how much more profitable is this technology? How much faster? Can I see an improvement in speed when using USB 3.0-enabled media?
USB 3.0 devices are backwards compatible with USB 2.0 ports. They will function normally, but only at the maximum USB 2.0 speed. The only drawback is that they are more expensive. In this article, we will look at the difference between usb 2.0 and usb 3.0. And also why the latest technology is so much better.
USB is a standard, and it defines the maximum signaling rate for a port. The USB 2.0 standard provides a theoretical maximum signal transfer rate of 480 megabits per second. While USB 3.0 allows you to transfer data at a speed of 5 gigabits per second. In theory, USB 3.0 is ten times faster than USB 2.0.
If that were all, then the issue of upgrading could be considered closed: who would not want a USB drive to be 10 times faster than it is now? But not everything is so simple. The standard only defines the maximum data rate. Different devices may have other bottlenecks, for example, for many drives, the data transfer time will depend on the speed of the flash memory.
Real speed indicators
Theory is good, but let's see how USB 3.0 flash drives actually work. Everything here will depend very much on the drive. We took the test done by tomshardware.com. The test also includes USB 2.0 drives, they are at the bottom of the diagram. And we can see a really interesting result.
USB 2.0 drives are capable of write speeds from 7.9 to 9.5 Mb/s, while USB 3.0 drives from 11.9 Mb/s up to 286.2 Mb/s. We see that the worst USB 3.0 drive is faster than all USB 2.0 drives, but not by much. And the best one is more than 28 times faster.
The slowest drives were the cheapest, while the faster ones were the most expensive. The fastest media achieves this speed thanks to quad-channel flash memory, which requires some investment from the manufacturer.
Technical features
Despite the fact that USB 2.0 vs USB 3.0 standards are compatible with each other, they have some differences in structure. To support older devices, USB 3.0 still has the same four pins. One pair for receiving and transmitting data, and the second for power. But here begins the difference between USB 2.0 and 3.0. To organize high speed operation, fast charging and other advantages, four more contacts were added, which are designed to work with a current of up to 1 ampere.
Because of this, two more twisted pairs were added. Now the cord itself has become thicker, and its maximum length from five meters has been reduced to three. Thanks to the increase in current, it is now possible to quickly charge smartphones and connect more devices to a single USB connector. In addition, protection against magnetic fields has been added to the cable.
What is the difference between USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 externally? First, it is the number of contacts. Secondly, manufacturers release USB 3.0 ports in blue or in some cases red. Therefore, it will not be difficult to determine which connector is in front of you.
Device price
Price is still a very important factor. Many USB 2.0 flash drives can be obtained very cheaply. For example, you can find an 8 GB flash drive for no more than $ 10, and for 4 GB, even for $ 5.
To see a significant speed boost with USB 3.0, you'll have to spend over $40. Ask yourself how much you are willing to spend and what you will use the drive for. Do you just need a small, cheap tool to move documents around? Then USB 2.0 is perfect. On the other hand, if speed is more important, especially for transferring heavy files, you'll probably need USB 3.0.
USB 3.0 Drive Selection
USB 3.0 allows higher speeds. But before you buy the right device, pay attention to other parameters that will be crucial, such as the speed of flash memory.
If you're looking for a good, fast USB drive for transferring large files, five dollars won't be enough. You need to look at various tests and determine in advance how fast the selected carrier of a particular brand will work. This can play an important role when choosing USB 2.0 or USB 3.0.
conclusions
In this article, we looked at the difference between USB 2.0 and USB 3.0. As you can see, there are a lot of differences, but everywhere there are nuances. Now you know how to tell USB 2.0 from USB 3.0. Please note that not all devices will be faster just because they use USB 3.0.
If you have a USB keyboard or mouse, then naturally you won't notice any speed changes when you upgrade to USB 3.0. Of course, sooner or later all devices will switch to this standard. There is nothing wrong. But it makes no sense to pay more for them now either. You can connect a USB 2.0 device to a USB 3.0 port as they are fully compatible.
And several other devices that we will connect to it, simultaneously measuring the speed of their work.
Let's check what is the real read and write speed for the new interface, at the same time we will test the purchased controller in "combat" conditions :)
First, let's test my new 8 GB USB 3.0 flash drive. Here he is:
As you can see, “super speed” is written on the packaging and below are the specific values \u200b\u200bof this “super speed”: read 100 MB / s (read - 100 megabytes per second) and write 20 MB / s (write - 20 megabytes per second). In the course of testing, we will definitely check this statement!
Also, another USB drive will take part in our test: an external hard drive with a USB 3.0 interface from Seagate.
But let's get it right! First, let's unpack our flash drive and put it next to its "sister" (also 8 gigabytes) USB 2.0 standard Here's what we got:
As we can see, the USB 3.0 flash drive is noticeably larger. What caused it?
Let's look at this point in more detail. What does a typical disassembled old usb drive look like? And it looks like this:
Here we have: a printed circuit board with one microcircuit (flash memory chip) and a small controller that controls the entire "household" + the connector itself. There is practically nothing of interest in the case anymore.
Now, let's look at a flash drive of the same size (8 gigabytes), but of a new (high-speed) standard:
We see that the board has as many as four flash memory chips (in the photo they are marked in red) plus a controller chip that controls them. Four chips need more space, hence the larger size of the whole structure.
It would not be superfluous to note here that high-speed flash drives of 16 gigabytes are even larger in size! I think now you, dear readers, understand why?
Such a "fast" flash drive works as a zero-level raid array (Raid 0), when several are combined into one virtual cluster, where information is distributed immediately across all disks included in the array in the form of small blocks (stripes). Due to this, an increased speed of the entire cluster is achieved. The speed increases in proportion to the number of disks involved in such aggregation.
Note: in the design described above, speed is achieved by sacrificing reliability. Since, if at least one of the disks fails, the entire array is destroyed. I repeat, it is not designed for data storage redundancy (reliability), but specifically for the speed of their processing.
Now we can clearly see that the increased speed of the new usb 3 flash drives is achieved largely due to the increase in the number of flash memory chips. As we remember, the declared speed of the usb 3.0 interface is 5 Gb / s (Gigabit per second) - about 600 MB / s (megabyte per second). BUT! this is the speed of the device interface, which has nothing to do with the speed of the slowest link in the "stuffing" of the flash drive (controller, data bus and the memory chips themselves).
Here the situation is similar to the one that we examined in the article on. When the speed of work declared on the box is strikingly different from what it actually is.
Note: In the summer of 2013, a new version of the standard was released - USB 3.1, which allows you to achieve transfer speeds of 10 Gb / s (gigabit per second). I remind you that - this is only for the interface, i.e. the actual speed of the end device is much lower.
So, after installing our computer on our computer, we go to the device manager and see the following:
Naturally, to start working with a new device, the system needs its driver. Well, no one promised that everything would be easy :) We go to the website of the board manufacturer and download the driver for our operating system (Windows 7 32 bit). We install it. The device manager "says" everything went well!
After that, I immediately wanted to answer my question regarding the fact that new USB 3 devices need a special extension cable to work at maximum speed. We talked about it in the first part of this article.
Of course, you can connect the drive directly to the board and not "bother", but we must check everything carefully! Therefore, we connect our high-speed flash drive to the controller via an outdated 2.0 standard extension cable and immediately at the bottom of the screen we see this pop-up window:
As they say, as required to prove! If you want to use an extension cable with new high-speed devices, buy a special cable (it costs around 6-8 dollars).
Now, let's move on to testing. How did we conduct it? I wrote the same amount of data (about three gigabytes) on all media. Moreover, the data was an absolutely heterogeneous set of digital information: music, video clips, one large ISO file, many small files and documents, distributions of various programs and utilities.
In short, I was trying to present a typical set of data that the average user can store on the device. After all, all the measurements of write and read speed given below are of interest to us, first of all, from a practical point of view (in a real, everyday situation), and not in the form of synthetic calculations?
Testing Multiple USB 3.0 Drives
Speed measurements were carried out using two programs: "" and "" you can download them and conduct your own testing. Measurements were also taken using the tool built into Windows 7.
The photo below shows a screenshot with the result of reading (copying) the declared amount of data (three gigabytes) from the "old" 2.0 standard flash drive
The final time for which the data was completely copied to the hard drive of my computer was about four minutes. We will also be interested in the "speed" field shown in the photo above. As you can see, its average value is 13.2 MB (megabytes) per second.
The next screenshot is the same, but for the "record" indicator (I completely formatted the flash drive) and back began to write the data copied to the disk before that.
The recording lasted about fourteen minutes at the average speed shown in the photo.
Now let's do this: let's try to measure the time and speed of moving the same data on a new flash drive of the 3.0 standard, connecting it, for now, to the same slow port of the obsolete standard.
Here's what we got for the read (copy) operation from the drive to the disk.
Two minutes (against four for an old-style drive), with an average speed that is also twice that of its counterpart - 26.5 megabytes per second.
The screenshot below shows us a photo of speed and time. records a set of heterogeneous data of three gigabytes for a high-speed flash drive:
Three minutes (against fourteen) for the old drive. Almost five times faster!
And now - attention! With bated breath, we connect a high-speed drive to a high-speed USB 3 port and naturally we expect a significant increase in performance.
First, as always, is the operation of copying our data.
One minute on a high-speed port (versus two on a slow one). To be honest, I expected a better result.
But the second test (for writing) finally upset me, where the numbers were almost the same as in the case of connecting a high-speed flash drive to a "slow" USB 2.0 port.
Let's just remember this empirical result for now and return to its analysis a little later: after all our tests are completed.
Let's run some synthetic tests now. And we'll start with Crystal Disk Mark” (download link above) and measure the speed of a USB 3.0 drive connected to a slow 2.0 port.
In the screenshot above, we can see that before the program gave the result, the test was "run" five times with a 100 megabyte file. Why did the program show three different results? The point is that the first line shows us continuous and sequential (sequence) read (read) and write (write) operations for a file of the specified size.
Line 512K shows the write and read speed for files of 512 kilobytes, and the last (third field) measures the speed for very small files up to 4 kilobytes in size. The smaller the files and the greater their total number, the more time is needed for operations on them. This is fine.
And here are the measurements for the same USB 3.0 flash drive, but connected to a high-speed 3.0 port.
Remember the very first screenshot in this article and the speeds declared on the packaging: (100 and 20 megabytes / s for reading and writing)? As you can see - very close to the truth!
Now is the time to recall our results of real data copying, where a high-speed device connected to a slow (2.0) and fast (3.0) ports for operations records showed almost the same results.
In the test above, we see the same situation! Operation reading(Read) - a sharp jerk forward, and the speed records(Write) remains virtually unchanged.
Let's bring in another program to help" AS SSD Benchmark"(download link - above) and see what it will show?
What is the screenshot below telling us? We chose our device (an 8 GB Silicon Power usb 2.0 flash drive) from the list of drives and ran a sequential test for it for read and write operations.
We see that the speed measurement was: for reading 16.56 megabytes / s and for writing - 4.66 megabytes per second. If you remember from the first screenshots of our testing, they are quite at the level of the results that we saw when actually copying and reading data from the drive (there were 13.2 for reading and 3.7 for writing).
Now, - let's take a measurement for our high-speed drive connected to the same "slow" port 2.0.
As you can see: 33 MB / s for reading and 19.48 MB / s for writing (against 26.5 and 16.8 in a real test when moving 3 GB files). Very similar values, which means - close to the reliability of the results.
Pay attention to the field " acc. time" (Access time - access time) in the screenshot above. It indicates the delay between the command to transfer data and, in fact, the time they start copying. This is exactly the reason (among others) that does not allow a high-speed usb 3 device to accelerate to those speeds that end users expect from it, i.e. - we are with you.
Now is the time to connect our new drive to port 3.0 and capture the result:
As expected, the speed of the operation records remained almost unchanged, but the result of reading from the device pleased (91.63 megabytes per second). The delay time (Access Time) has also decreased, which indicates a better optimization of the controller when accessing flash memory cells.
Now, here are a few screenshots that will show us the operation of our Seagate 500 GB USB 3.0 external drive, which we mentioned at the beginning of the article. Here is his photo:
Let's try to evaluate the real speed of our external hard drive by "feeding" it the same amount of information that we previously used for a flash drive. First, connect the HDD to a slower (2.0) USB port on the computer and write test.
Three gigabytes were copied to an external drive from a computer in two minutes and thirty seconds at an average speed shown in the photo above.
Now we will carry out the same test (for writing), but by connecting the hard drive to the "native" high-speed 3.0 port of the PC.
Recording time, in this case, was one minute and fifteen seconds (half as long), at twice the speed.
Now let's try to run the same two tests using the "AS SSD Benchmark" program. Connect the drive to port 2.0 and run the program:
Now - to the high-speed usb 3.0 connector:
A bit of an unexpected result! :) But I checked several times - the picture did not change. This, apparently, confirms the idea that purely synthetic tests should be treated with a certain degree of caution.
Now, as I promised at the beginning of the article, I will express my subjective opinion about the testing and the results obtained with it.
It turned out like this for me: in order to feel a significant increase in speed from using a USB 3.0 flash drive, it is even necessary to connect it to the "native" high-speed blue port. Especially if it is simply not on your computer! In itself, the presence of several parallel-operating chips in the drive already gives a significant increase in speed.
Additionally, connecting to port 3.0, unfortunately, does not give the expected increase in speed (primarily for write operations), apparently due to the presence of other "bottlenecks" in the design (data bus, delays introduced by the controller before the start of transmission, etc. ).
Let's calculate the money: a high-speed flash drive for 8 gigabytes will cost about $ 20 (against five for the usual old 2.0 standard). We have given the tests above. You can visually estimate the increase in speed by about 4-5 times. Further - the choice is yours. Is it worth it to pay the "extra" $15 to get a more comfortable work with large amounts of data? Personally for myself, I decided: "It's worth it!" :)
I repeat, even if your computer does not have a specialized USB 3.0 port, you will feel a big difference! The potential of the new interface, in my case, was more fully revealed only when using an external USB 3.0 hard drive connected to the PC's high-speed port.
Of course, you should not flatter yourself in vain about all these 5Gbit / s, 10Gbit / s. As we have already said, this is a potential interface speed that has little in common with the real one. We can get a good speed boost from using the new technology right now. What, in fact, I wish you, dear readers, and see you in the following articles on the pages of our site!
3.0. It flashes blue if you plug it into a USB 3.0 port. If it is a 2.0 port, the light turns white.
Yesterday I turned it on and the light was blue. Now I plugged it in the same port and the light is white.
Can I somehow detect if the USB port I just plugged in is 2.0 or 3.0? I want to know if there is a problem with the device or USB port I am using.
Change: i am using windows 8.1
6 Solutions collect form web for “How can I tell if a USB port is 3.0 or 2.0?”
To check if a USB device is indeed USB 2.0 or 3.0, use the USB Device Viewer (on a computer). Then disconnect all USB devices on the computer and reconnect the appropriate USB cable. You will see that it is displayed in the sidebar on the left. Click on it. On the right, scroll the page about 1/4 of a page. In the Connection Information section, view the bus speed of the device. This is what you should be looking for:
USB 2: Device Bus Speed: 0x02 (High-Speed)
USB 3: Device Bus Speed: 0x03 (Super-Speed)
Another way:
As mdpc said, the device you plug the USB into should have different signs or colors to show if the USB ports are really 2 or 3:
USB2:
USB 3 (the sign on the left depicts "SS" and the USB sign. SS = SuperSpeed as above):
There are many methods here. Check the Microsoft website for information on the various signs you may see.
Sometimes if you connect a USB3.0 device too slowly, it will be recognized as 2.0.
What for? Because the 3.0 output line is on the second line, so if the protocol handshake is completed before your device is fully connected, it will never get USB3.0 speed.
This is especially annoying when using USB dongles like sandisk's Extrem series as the plug is on strings and often sinks slowly into the port.
I understand that the USB standard specifies that a USB 3 port will have a blue colored plastic tab inside the plug.
Just look at the ports and if they are blue then it is USB3.
USB 3.0 with 5 pins for Super Speed.
I'm not a fan of posting commercial crap, but I was looking for a quick and easy way out and you probably are too :)
I found a tool called USBDeview which is free to download and will give you extensive information about all your USB ports (including the exact version). As far as I can see, the version column shows the version of the port, not the connected device (I know I put in a USB 3.0 stick and it shows version 2, so that's my computers port, which is quite likely 2.0) :)
My virus scan didn't report any issues and it doesn't require installation, just a simple exe. Here is the download link. http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/usb_devices_view.html
Many computer manufacturers do not explicitly label USB port versions. Use Device Manager to determine if your computer has USB 1.1, 2.0, or 3.0 ports:
Open the Device Manager. In the "Device Manager" window, click the + (plus sign) next to Universal Serial Bus controllers. You will see a list of the USB ports installed on your computer. If your USB port name contains "Universal Host", your port is version 1.1. If the port name contains both "Universal Host" and "Enhanced Host", your port is version 2.0. If the port name contains "USB 3.0", your port is version 3.0.
This is a document in the knowledge base.