USB-C is a big step forward for connectors, but it is still a confusing mess when it comes to what each port can actually do.

I just spent the afternoon reading the USB-IF documentation about USB-C and I have questions. And rants. While I was at it, I revisited our breakdown of USB Power Delivery here: USB-PD Explained with Charts .

USB-C is supposed to be the great universal port of our time. One cable to rule them all. One port to simplify everything. One connector so symmetrical you can plug it in upside down at 2AM and still feel like a genius.

And honestly, it is a huge improvement. It is the direction the industry should go. Finally, a connector that is not designed by the same person who thought micro-USB was a good idea.

Understanding why a truly universal bootable USB flash drive cannot exist, even though millions of people keep searching for one.

People search for a universal bootable USB flash drive because the idea sounds so simple: one USB stick you plug into any computer, and everything just starts. Windows, Mac, Linux, old laptops, new desktops — one drive to boot them all. If millions of people keep looking for it, surely it must exist, right?

But the truth is more like walking into a hardware store and asking for one key that unlocks every house on Earth. Not because the idea is silly, but because every house is built differently. Some have old metal locks, some have smart deadbolts with keypads, some slide, some latch, some spin, and some are designed never to open unless the owner approves it. The problem isn’t the key. The problem is the doors.

A universal bootable USB flash drives drive runs into the exact same issue.

People imagine a USB stick as a magic power switch — plug it into any machine and the computer should wake up and run from it. But computers don’t share a single design. They’re more like different types of vehicles. A Ford pickup, a Tesla, a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, and a jet ski all have engines, but you can’t fire them up with the same ignition key. You wouldn’t expect the same engine to fit in all of them either.

A tiny design decision in 1996 didn’t just annoy us — it reshaped tech culture, product adoption, and billions of daily interactions.

This post was drafted on a napkin somewhere between a refill and a revelation.

Let me paint you a picture. It’s 1996. Somewhere in a conference room filled with beige computers and men wearing pleated khakis, a group of engineers is finalizing the design for a new kind of cable called USB.

And then… it happens.

Someone says, “Should we make it work both ways?” Someone else replies, “Nah, people will figure it out.”

That’s it. That was the moment. That was the butterfly wing flap that doomed humanity to decades of flipping a plug three times before it fits.

Fast-forward to today. Seven billion people have lived through the USB Shuffle:

1. Try to plug it in. Doesn’t fit.
2. Flip it. Still doesn’t fit.
3. Flip it back. Suddenly works, because the universe is mocking you.

If you haven’t cursed under your breath during step two, congratulations — you’re either lying or, I don’t know, you use wireless everything and hate productivity.

The Cost of the USB Struggle: Humanity’s Dumbest Time Sink

Let’s talk impact. Because this isn’t just inconvenience. This is a global time suck of biblical proportions.

Quick napkin math:

• Average person plugs in a USB 2× a day
• Each attempt wastes 3–5 seconds of flipping, inspecting, and questioning your life choices
• Multiply by 3+ billion USB users worldwide

We’re looking at millions of hours of collective human existence lost to a tiny, avoidable design flaw.

Think about that. We could’ve cured something. We could’ve written more books. We could’ve finally understood taxes. But no — we were busy rotating a rectangle like chimps trying to solve a puzzle box.

If USB Had Been Reversible From Day One

A Construction Worker USB Flash Drive That Builds Lasting Impressions

At first glance, this isn’t just another thumb drive—it’s a miniature construction worker, complete with hard hat, safety vest, and a friendly smile. The figure looks like something you’d keep on your desk, and that’s exactly the point. It mixes a useful tool with a playful, display-worthy shape, so people actually keep it rather than toss it in a drawer.

It is common to hear Raspberry Pi owners want more USB ports. GetUSB.info just read about them introducing an official 4 port USB hub. Sweet. To note, most Raspberry Pi single-board computers, except for the Raspberry Pi Zero and A+ models, include a built-in USB hub that splits one USB connection into several USB Type-A ports. Just recently they launched the official Raspberry Pi USB 3 Hub, a high-quality USB 3.0 hub that offers four additional USB ports.

This hub includes a single upstream USB 3.0 Type-A connector with an 3 inches (8 cm) built-in cable. The “upstream” port is the socket used to communicate with the host device, which in this case is the Raspberry Pi. It also has four downstream USB 3.0 Type-A ports and can reach data transfer speeds up to 5 Gbps. There’s a USB-C socket for an optional external 3A power supply but that isn’t included with the $12 purchase. Quick note, the downstream port is are the sockets used to communicate with the devices, like a USB flash drive, hard drive, mouse, keyboard, printer, etc.

One driving force on why Raspberry Pi wanted to sponsor their own USB hub is the fact most ‘other’ hubs are just too expensive. One fundamental goal of Raspberry Pi is to provide an unparalleled offering for computer code development and the lowest possible price. Usually, you either pay a high price for a reliable, well-designed product, or you buy a cheaper option that’s unreliable, doesn’t work with various devices, or simply looks bad.

With this hub, there is no “race to the bottom,” where cheap, poor-quality products pushed out better options, and online marketplaces like Amazon became filled with low-quality hubs. To offer a better solution the Raspberry team got together with with Infineon to source a quality hub chip called the CYUSB3304.

Based on user beta testers and user comments here are the pros and cons of the Raspberry Pi USB 3 Hub:

Is it worth buying a USB 3.1 USB flash drive?

The tech industry, tech nerds and tech blogs will definitely say that buying a USB 3.1 flash drive is worth it. After all, these blogs need something new to write about and new links to generate for affiliate advertising, but are these blogs reporting back valuable information before someone spends their hard earned cash?

Let us compare the write speed difference between a USB 3.1 flash drive and a USB 3.0 flash drive to see what information we can uncover.

Universal Serial Bus (USB) has different transfer speeds based on the version of technology, we did a write about that earlier. The USB 3.1 specification has a transfer rate which taps out at 1,250 MB/second (Megabytes per second). The USB 3.0 specification has a transfer rate which taps out at 625MB/second. Of course this is the theoretical maximum transfer speed. When anyone says “theoretical transfer speed” they are implicating all conditions are ideal. For example, the host computer has the horsepower and bandwidth to push that much data and the receiving device (in this case, flash drive) has equal throughput to receive that data. But is that the real world – is it worth buying a USB 3.1 USB flash drive?

Below are some images and here is the general order of what you will be reading:

• Screen shots of the USB device type (USB 3.0 and USB 3.1)
• Screen shots of benchmark software testing both USB technologies
• Screen shots of a real-world copy jobs using a Windows computer

From the screen shots below you can see a USB 3.0 flash drive and USB 3.1 flash drive. Both flash drives use an SMI controller for the USB 3.0 and 3.1 technology. These are the same high quality and higher performance controllers seen in iPhones and NAND memory used from Micron Technology. The NAND memory type is MLC (multi-layer cell memory) is slower than SLC NAND memory (single layer cell). Note: USB flash drives do not use SLC memory because the NAND memory price is too expensive and the SLC supply is very small. Flash drives are produced at mass scale and meant to be a low cost data transfer and storage tools – speed is not the #1 priority, despit all the marketing we read online.

Here are benchmark speed tests for both USB devices in discussion today.

The program has two test settings for benchmarking a speed test. One test setting is for the theoretical maximum speed of the device and writes data directly to memory without accounting for operating system and device overhead for were the data is stored. Think of this as a random write test to any available sector on the flash drive.

The second test setting is a write sequence which includes the operating system and device overhead cache for placing files in the file allocation table. This means extra time is spend during the data transfer to log where each sector is written along with the calculation required to write the next bit of data. This second test setting is more like a real-world experience.

Speed benchmark software is designed to provide a relatively quick summary of the device capability. So the first test setting is designed to show the theoretical maximum write speed or “burst” write speed. The second test setting is designed to show a more “sustained” write speed. Any benchmark software is designed to provide a quick and easy snap-shot of what the device can do – but can the device do it?

Readers can download the USB Scrub software for speed benchmarking their flash drives. The software is 100% free, no installation or sign-ups, and includes other cool features like registry cleaning and making image files of flash drives. USB Scrub download link

Most USB specification speeds are shown in Mbps or Megabits per second, but nearly all users reference data storage in MB (Megabytes) or GB (Gigabytes) so this post converts the Mbps rate to MB/second and presents them in a picture graph. Scroll down to see the image.

In the year 1995 seven companies came together to develop USB or Universal Serial Bus. The overall goal was making a uniform way storage devices would connect to computers. (Seven companies are: Compaq, DEC, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, NEC, and Nortel)

• USB 1.0 was introduced in 1996.
• USB2.0 was introduced in 2000.
• USB 3.0 was introduced in 2008 with the next generation of USB 3.0 called 3.1 introduced in 2013.
• USB 3.2 was released in 2017.
• USB 4.0 specification was released in 2019.

USB speeds shown in MB per second is shown below as a picture graph. The graph below shows the MB/second in relationship to the USB version. In addition, the USB connector type is highlighted for the versions which are available.

The adoption rate of USB specifications to enter the market typically has a 2 year delay from the time of specification release to products becoming available. The duration for those technologies to become fully saturated in the market takes even longer. For example, the USB 4.0 specification may take another four years before the majority of products available will support those transfer speeds.

The data transfer speeds of USB 4.2 will be welcome as moving 10,000 MB/s will easily satisfy the human expectation of “is it done yet!”

Two things to consider however when it comes to our expectations and reality.

1. The transfer speeds from these specifications (or any specification like PCI or SCSI) are always the theoretical speeds. Actual, real life speeds will be less.
2. Although USB 4.2 sounds incredible fast, the possibility of files increasing in size is about as exponential as Moore’s Law anyway. Meaning our MP4 video file of today that is 100MB in size… will be higher resolution and better sound a year or two down the road and will balloon in size to 500MB or more.

The device market for all USB technologies in the year 2021 was valued at an estimated $35.3 Billion US Dollars.

The growing use of consumer electronics such as smartphones and laptop computers in developed and developing countries is primarily due to rising disposable income, population growth, and increased Internet penetration. Significant technological advancements have resulted in an increase in the penetration of these devices across several economies. According to the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), smartphone sales in the United States will total 152 million units in 2020.

USB devices have emerged as a dominant interface for meeting the growing demand for fast data transfer between end devices such as laptops, smartphones, PCs, and digital cameras. As a result of the increasing demand for consumer electronics and data transmission products, global USB device market players are focusing on launching new products in order to achieve sustainable growth and differentiate themselves from competitors, thereby contributing to market growth.

Using the command prompt (cmd) you can quickly and easily get the USB volume serial number and the USB device serial number. There is no computer experienced needed to perform these functions, simply type a couple letters and you will get the information!

To get the USB Volume Serial Number do the following:

Insert USB flash drive into the computer

Double click the drive letter associated with the USB flash drive (remember the drive letter as you will need this in a moment)

In File Explorer type: cmd

From the command prompt type: vol d: and click Enter ( where “d” is the drive letter of the USB flash drive)

The command prompt window will return the results and look something like this:

The Volume in drive D is named “Nexcopy”

The Volume serial number is 3AAB-AA16

After we explain how to get the USB device serial number we will explain the difference between the two.

To get the USB Device Serial Number do the following:

If anyone searches for “burn ISO to USB” they will get pages and pages of Rufus links. However, there is a big misconception with Rufus… it doesn’t create USB CD-ROM drives! Review Rufus with us now:

The only thing Rufus does is take a bootable ISO file and write the data to a USB stick. Basically Rufus will extra the data on an ISO file and write it to the flash drive. You can do the same thing with WinRAR.

There is nothing magical about Rufus when it comes to “making a CD” because Rufus doesn’t make a “CD.”

If you need to make a USB CD-ROM flash drive the best solution found so far, is the Disc License drive. The Disc License drive is a blank USB CD-ROM flash drive. Using their Drive Wizard software (free), easily write ISO files to USB. The resultant drive will be a USB CD-ROM flash drive.

Before we get into Disc License technology, we do need to clear up some points about WinRAR and Rufus software. WinRAR will extract all the files contained in an ISO file and write them to your USB flash drive; however, if the ISO is bootable, WinRAR won’t write the boot code. This is where Rufus does shine. The Rufus software will write all the files contained in an ISO file along with the boot code to make your device bootable. With that said, there is a clear advantage for using Rufus over WinRAR.

Does Rufus burn any ISO file to USB? NO.

Does Rufus make your USB flash drive read-only, like a CD? NO.

If the ISO file isn’t bootable, there isn’t much [more] Rufus can offer. A non-bootable image will display an error message saying “This image is either non-bootable, or it uses a boot or compression method that is not supported by Rufus.”

Rufus is truly designed for one thing:

CD and DVD optical duplicators have been popular for years; however, with the disc drive no longer sold in computers, the only device left for moving files around are USB flash drives – well, most common device at least. With that in mind, let us provide a USB duplicator review and our observations about them.

So what is the speed of burning a DVD compared to copying to a USB flash drive? With a 16X DVD recorder it will take about 6-7 minutes to burn an entire disc, which is 4.7GBs. A common size DVD duplicator is seven drive system which means 7 copies every 7 minutes. However, today’s file sizes are getting larger and a data load can easily be over 5GBs. A dual layer DVD is 8.5GBs and would take about 27 minutes.

The USB duplicator in this review is a sixtenn target USB 3.0 duplicator manufactured by Nexcopy. This model was selected because it was the most popular in search results, and honestly – looks best for an office setting. This system will make sixteen copies at 1GB under a minute; which translates to 16 copies in less than five minutes. The dual-layer DVD mentioned above would be 9 minutes to make 16 copies. Clearly a USB duplicator is more efficient than a DVD duplicator.

OVERVIEW

Nexcopy’s model in today’s review is the USB160PC. This is a Windows computer based software and hardware solution which runs on Windows 7 or Windows 10. The copy speeds are the same as designated standalone systems. Below is a picture of the PC based system and the standalone system, both about the same port numbering (16).

The USB160PC uses software and provides six copy modes which a company can chose which copy method is best for their needs. Copy modes are:

• File Copy
• Copy Add
• Device Copy – Data Only
• Device Copy – Full Media
• IMG Copy
• Unique Data Streaming

We will cover the copy modes a bit later in the review.

The Drive Manager software by Nexcopy, has a data extraction feature giving the user the ability to extract data off the drive and make a data dump to a location on the host PC.

The PC based USB duplicator is fast and flexible to work with and provides excellent user feedback during the duplication process. The GUI (Graphical User Interface) ties in the obvious information such as USB flash drive total size, bytes used, percentage done during duplication and pass/fail response. Nexcopy uses their own Drive Manager software (trademarked) and provides lifetime software support and updates for free.

The GUI does an excellent job of identifying the USB device shown in the software with the USB socket on the duplicator. This is one problem with any home-grown duplication system, like connecting flash drives to a USB hub – the only way to identify a drive is by disconnecting it until you’ve found the one in question. The USB160PC gives you the tools to quickly identify each USB drive connected.

The bonus information from Drive Manager is the second tab of the GUI. This page shows the device serial number, the VID (Vendor ID) the PID (Product ID) and device descriptor information. The tech folks will appreciate this feature.

HARDWARE

For this USB duplicator review we weighed the duplicator box and it came in just under 5 pounds – so portable! Two LED for feedback along with the GUI software. Blue LED shows power to the socket and green LED displays activity of the device (will blink when reading or writing data). The GUI will provide performance feedback and status about the copy job and process. The power supply is auto-detecting and will automatically work in a 110v or 230v environment, no need to make a manual power setting switch with the physical box. The USB duplicator has a 5v fan on the back side to provide air flow for cooling; although we didn’t experience any heat during testing and operation.

The power supply inside is a 150watt MeanWell brand power block, which is a brand used by medical companies so power will never be an issue. This also means the 150watt power supply can support 16 USB hard drives.