Add Read/Write Speed Test for USB Flash Drives (They vary widely in performance)

eBoostr Beta Program Forum » Suggestions

Add Read/Write Speed Test for USB Flash Drives (They vary widely in performance)

(25 posts) (9 voices)

Started 2 years ago by byteboss
Latest reply from Zeioth

Tags:

byteboss
Member

There is a HUGE VARIATION in performance characteristics of USB Flash Drives. Perhaps this is one reason for the wide variation in performance that people are reporting. I suggest adding a speed test function to eBoostr that can do a quick test of the read/write speed of attached USB Drives. Many people have several different Flash drives around and if eBoostr could measure the Read/Write speed of them, people could then easily choose the fastest ones they have for eBoostr's Cache.

The importance of USB Flash Drive read/write performance characteristics should also be mentioned in eBoostr's installation and troubleshooting notes. It would not only aid people in selecting the appropriate Flash Drives to buy, but very likely reduce the amount of customer support needed from the eBoostr team.

Perhaps the eBoostr software could also report back to the Web Site the performance characteristics it measures for each brand and model of USB Flash Drive. A table could then be displayed on the web site showing that data. It would be a great way for people to find out which Flash Drives perform best with eBoostr.

Posted 2 years ago #
Robert Persons
Member

I agree completely, and it would go a long ways toward helping users be more satisfied with eBoostr. I have also found that read speeds can vary depending on what else is plugged into that particular USB controler. A built in read test in eBoostr would show the results of both the flash drive itself and the hardware.

Using HD Tune, which gaves a continuous readout of read speeds, I watched as a plugged a second flash drive into an adjacent usb port, and the read speed dropped from 30MBs to 25MBs. Unplugged the second flash drive and it jumped back up. I put the second flash drive in a usb port on the front of the PC and the speed was unaffected (the first drive was on the back). Without this real time readout it would have been very difficult to catch this.

For those interested, there are two free programs I know of to measure write/read speeds: HD Tune and HD Speed.

Posted 2 years ago #
byteboss
Member

Robert Persons wrote:
I agree completely, and it would go a long ways toward helping users be more satisfied with eBoostr. I have also found that read speeds can vary depending on what else is plugged into that particular USB controler. A built in read test in eBoostr would show the results of both the flash drive itself and the hardware.

Using HD Tune, which gaves a continuous readout of read speeds, I watched as a plugged a second flash drive into an adjacent usb port, and the read speed dropped from 30MBs to 25MBs. Unplugged the second flash drive and it jumped back up. I put the second flash drive in a usb port on the front of the PC and the speed was unaffected (the first drive was on the back). Without this real time readout it would have been very difficult to catch this.

For those interested, there are two free programs I know of to measure write/read speeds: HD Tune and HD Speed.

Thanks Robert, your findings are very helpful. When you think about it, the results you got make sense; but it's not something one would readily consider. Also appreciate the software recommendations....

Posted 2 years ago #
David Gardiner
Member

Great news Robert,

I aquired HDTune and tested my "Digitor" 4MB flashdisk at 14 MB/s. However it didn't slow down when I inserted another flashdisk.

My "SanDisk' 512KB flashdisk tests at 17 MB/s.

In spite of the Digitor being labelled "ReadyBoost ready", it is obviously only half the performance of yours.

What brand of flash disk are you using and what results are others getting for different brands?

David G

Posted 2 years ago #
Robert Persons
Member

I'm using the Lexar Lightning 431 4GB ... one of the fastest I could find. I have a Patriot Boost XT on order which should be similar, but less money. The Lexar was about $37 at Amazon.

I've also tested a freebee from MicroCenter with HD Speed, which lets one test read rates at different file sizes. If found the freebee slightly beat the Lexar with 4K files ... and had closer to 21 MBs with large files (Lexar = 30 MBs). My conclusion is that low end flash drives might be fine with ReadyBoost since it only caches 4K and smaller, but with eBoostr faster is better for the large files it caches.

As far as hardware speed slowdown with multiple flash drives, I want to clarify that just pluggin in the second drive slowed down the first one (the second one was Not used for eBoostr or ReadyBoost). Just having it on the controller slowed down the other ports on that same usb controller. Plugging in a card reader had a similar effect (without a card inserted). And a second flash drive and a card reader combined doubled the slowdown. I'm curious if other people are seeing this effect too, or if this is only an issue with ASUS mobos.

Posted 2 years ago #
chooky
Beta Veteran

I don't like HD Tune for measuring nand based storage. It is good for showing how speed decreases across a HDD. As you have noticed speeds don't change much accross USB drives or SSD's. HD Tune also only shows sequential read. For OS and application performance 4k reads are more important. This is where SSD's and USB drives are much better than HDD's. To measure this I like CrystalDiskMark

As you can see the USB drive has a 4k read of 8MB/s the HDD is less than 1MB/s

This is my 2x 30GB Vertex RAID 0 its 4K reads are much faster than a USB drive. This is why a USB cache actually slows down a PC with SSD storage. If I made a Ramdrive the test would show 4k reads being many times faster than my SSD's.

While I was testing my USB drive I thought I would see if different file systems made any difference.

So NTFS was the slowest FAT32 and exFat where identical.

Robert, I would like to see the results of your Lexar Lightning with this test.

The eBoostr speed test seems to show sequential speeds which would also explain why it is a bit at odds with how the PC performs compared to the speed test.

Posted 2 years ago #
mradr
Member

As far as hardware speed slowdown with multiple flash drives, I want to clarify that just pluggin in the second drive slowed down the first one (the second one was Not used for eBoostr or ReadyBoost). Just having it on the controller slowed down the other ports on that same usb controller. Plugging in a card reader had a similar effect (without a card inserted). And a second flash drive and a card reader combined doubled the slowdown. I'm curious if other people are seeing this effect too, or if this is only an issue with ASUS mobos.

This is cuased by the usb controller, not your MB alone. The controller is shard if more then one device is used on the controller.

Posted 2 years ago #
byteboss
Member

It's disappointing news to hear that just having unused USB devices plugged in can effect the USB performance. All modern computers these days use USB keyboards, mice, printers, and sometimes USB WiFi Adapters.

Robert mentioned that he has a Patriot XT USB Flash Drive on Order. I have such a drive; it's the 4 GB version. I just ran a speed test on it. I'll post the results below along with the speeds measured for some other Flash Drives I have.

Patriot XT 4 GB: Read Speed of 26.3 MB/S, Write Speed of 10.2 MB/S (Only Drive listed here marked "Ready Boost")

Lexar Elite Jump Drive 1 GB: Read Speed of 9.1 MB/S, Write Speed of 7.4 MB/S

A-Data My Flash 2 GB: Read Speed of 18.3 MB/S, Write Speed Not Available

HP 2 GB: Read Speed of 12.3 MB/S, Write Speed of 1.1 MB/S

Dell 128 MB: Read Speed of 0.90 MB/S, Write Speed of 0.89 MB/S

Corsair Flash Voyager 1 GB: Read Speed of 25.4 MB/S, Write Speed Not Available

Note:
The read speed on the Corsair Flash Voyager was very close to the Patriot XT, but I would not recommend the Corsair. I bought 3 of them a couple years ago. Two of them were bad when received. They were replaced by the manufacturer but all three have given me constant problems. I've tried using them on nearly a dozen different computers and more than half of the PCs either don't recognize the device or report that the Drive is unformatted. Perhaps the manufacturer has worked the bugs out of them by now, but I'm not willing to give them a second chance as long as there are other options available without the questionable history.

Posted 2 years ago #
Robert Persons
Member

Thank you byteboss fr the specs! I encourage other testers to post their results too ... it can save us all alot of time in choosing flash drives.

As far as the hardware slowdown goes, I have a wireless mouse and a wireless keyboard on the same usb conroller as my main Lexar flash drive but they don't seem to have a measurable effect. So far I've only found a problem with other flash drives and a card reader (without a card). It seems that my PC has two enhanced usb controllers built in, and each controller has six ports (a set on the front and a set on the back). So it's basically two controllers, each having a built in hub. This makes it less surprising that there can be slowdowns. I think the theoretical limit on a USB 2.0 controller is about 60MBs, although I've read that 40MBs is more likely in the real world. The USB 3.0 standard was finished and the hardware is expected to appear in the next several months. The maximum theoretical speed is about 400MBs!! It should give eBoostr a big boost in it's performance when using multiple flash drives, and hopefully faster USB 3.0 flash drives as they evolve.

More info at: http://www.everythingusb.com/superspeed-usb.html

In the meantime, if someone really wants peak performance with multiple flash drives one could put in a couple PCIe USB cards, one dedicated solely for each flash drive ... or just pony up for an SSD.

Posted 2 years ago #
byteboss
Member

Robert Persons wrote:
So far I've only found a problem with other flash drives and a card reader (without a card). It seems that my PC has two enhanced usb controllers built in, and each controller has six ports (a set on the front and a set on the back). So it's basically two controllers, each having a built in hub. This makes it less surprising that there can be slowdowns. The USB 3.0 standard was finished and the hardware is expected to appear in the next several months. The maximum theoretical speed is about 400MBs!! It should give eBoostr a big boost in it's performance when using multiple flash drives, and hopefully faster USB 3.0 flash drives as they evolve.

Robert, thanks for the clarification on that. Things aren't quite as bad as I had imagined then. USB 3.0 sounds pretty exciting. It looks like USB Flash Drive manufacturer's have a lot of catching-up to do with their technology!

Posted 2 years ago #
gnolf
Member

Here are my results:

SuperTalent Pico C 16 GB:
Read (blocksize auto / type sequential): average 25.8 MB
Write (blocksize auto / type sequential): average 12.8 MB

OCZ Rally 2 TURBO 4 GB:
Read (blocksize auto / type sequential): average 29.4 MB
Write (blocksize auto / type sequential): average 24.8 MB

Posted 2 years ago #
Yves
Member

And here my sad results for USB Stick 8GB OCZ Rally2 Turbo:
Read average 28,8 mb/s
Write average 19,4 mb/s

I will never buy from OCZ again. :-(

Posted 2 years ago #
mradr
Member

Yves wrote:
And here my sad results for USB Stick 8GB OCZ Rally2 Turbo:
Read average 28,8 mb/s
Write average 19,4 mb/s

I will never buy from OCZ again. :-(

Why not? Thats perty good, I mean your write a little slower due to your high cap size, but thats ok for just a flash drive. + You wont get much over 30 anyways, and if you have anything connected to the usb controller too, it too takes away from your speed.

Posted 2 years ago #
chooky
Beta Veteran

I started looking at USB drives thinking that if I got a fast one, instead of my current cheap one, it may do some good. Then I looked at the prices of fast ones and found you can get 4GB of RAM for a lot less than a fast 4GB USB drive. I found this comparison http://www.testfreaks.com/blog/review/usb-flash-memory/usb-flash-drive-comparison-21-tested-and-compared/ according to the comparison the OCZ ATV Turbo USB 2.0 4GB AU$166.50 and OCZ Rally2 Turbo USB 2.0 4GB AU$164.64 are the fastest. I can get 4GB of system RAM for under AU$100 which makes a much faster eBoostr cache. So unless you can not physically fit more RAM eBoostr users should probably look at RAM before USB storage.

Interesting to note that the best speeds are from the 4GB models.

Posted 2 years ago #
mradr
Member

Yup, but you have to go with the ram you have in your system all ready. In my case, another 4GB of ram would cost me $70, +20 or -30 differents, but almost x800 times the speed.

*I look up thos prices and I find them to be sorta off... the OCZ Rally2 Turbo I found for 47.99 and the ATV for 104.

Actully, I find that SSD are becoming way and way better for their price. I hear Intel will becoming out with a new SSD that will fill the banwith of the new SATA3 6GB, thats f*%^ fast! I bet in a few years flash will be as fast at the main stream DDR2 800 and even it the 1GB mark in another 4years (there all ready some flash drives out there that have hit the 1GB mark, but cost $1000 for only about 125GB of space, the Fusion-IO for example) Then finally, in 5-8 year, flash will replace ram in some way or form.

Posted 2 years ago #
chooky
Beta Veteran

My prices are Australian dollars.

Posted 2 years ago #
Zeioth
Member

My favourite flash drive is "Kingston DataTraveler 410 8gb" you can buy it for 20€ and have simetric 20mb/s. Very good price/quality . kingston hyper x can reach 30 mb/s but the price is doubled.

Posted 2 years ago #
Robert Persons
Member

I just came across this interesting beauty; a flash drive with an esata interface. The OCZ Throttle specs are listed as up to 90 MB/s read, and 30 MB/s write. Reviews have found real world read performance in the 80-85 MB/s range. Much faster than the 30 MB/s I've seen on the fastest USB drives. And the price point is reasonaable; 8 GB for US$40 at Amazon.

http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/flash_drives/ocz_throttle_esata_flash_drive

Until USB 3.0 comes becomes more widely available, this looks like an interesting alternative to USB flash drives. Has anybody tried this out with eBooster?

Posted 2 years ago #
byteboss
Member

Robert Persons wrote:
I just came across this interesting beauty; a flash drive with an esata interface. The OCZ Throttle specs are listed as up to 90 MB/s read, and 30 MB/s write. Reviews have found real world read performance in the 80-85 MB/s range. Much faster than the 30 MB/s I've seen on the fastest USB drives. And the price point is reasonaable; 8 GB for US$40 at Amazon.

http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/flash_drives/ocz_throttle_esata_flash_drive

Until USB 3.0 comes becomes more widely available, this looks like an interesting alternative to USB flash drives. Has anybody tried this out with eBooster?

Robert, thanks for sharing. Sounds real interesting if eBoostr will recognize it.

Posted 2 years ago #
Zeioth
Member

Thanks robert, i just buy one on amazon.

Posted 2 years ago #
mradr
Member

Here you go
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/eSATA-USB-Flash,review-1195-9.html

Posted 2 years ago #
mikei
eBoostr Team

We will add functionality to do quick test for media speed without having to create cache on it.

Posted 2 years ago #
Robert Persons
Member

Thank you Mikei!!

Please consider having it as a real time readout which keeps testing continously. This will also help find slowdowns on the USB bus. For example one could watch the readout while plugging and unpluging other USB devices to see if they slow down the flash drive.

It's good to know that our work and suggestions are being heard. I hope we are providing the kind of feedback you find useful.

Posted 2 years ago #
Robert Persons
Member

Hey Zeioth,

I see on a recent post that you have the OCZ eSata Throttle used with eBoostr. What kind of read/write speeds are you getting with it? Do you have some direct access specs through HD Tune or similar program? I'm thinknig of buying one myself but wanted to see if the real world specs live up to their promises of up to 90 MB/s read, and 30 MB/s write.

Thank You

Posted 2 years ago #
Zeioth
Member

By the moment I only can use it at the usb port Robert, since the e-sata port of my motherboard doesn´t work. I'm gonna buy an esata-sata bracket and then should reach 90/30 mb/s.
http://www.cablematic.com/index.php?_sect=search&_cl_id=1&_lang=esp&menu=&searchthis=esata&_photo_magnify=1&mode=1&id=3866&fam=&pag=12&p=
My speed now it's 30mb/s and write 30mb/s read.

Posted 2 years ago #

RSS feed for this topic

Reply

You must log in to post.