Is it worth buying a USB 3.1 Flash Drive?

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

• The USB 3.0 flash drive will write data at 67MB/second burst and 59MB/second sustained
• The USB 3.1 flash drive will write data at 244MB/second burst and 151MB/second sustained

But can the device do it?

There is a difference when writing to 30% of the device capacity (or higher) compared to shorter benchmark speed tests.

Looking at the data above you would think both devices are very fast, and especially the USB 3.1 being particularly fast. This data, which tech blogs publish, would prove their point of “Yes, it is worth buying a USB 3.1 USB flash drive.”

Let us dig deeper and test these same flash drives with a larger data load. In the screen shots below we are using a 64GB flash drive and loading nearly 45GBs of data. You will see the results are not that impressive!

• The USB 3.0 flash drive will write data at 67MB/second burst and 59MB/second sustained
• The USB 3.1 flash drive will write data at 244MB/second burst and 151MB/second sustained

What we observed and what you can see in the graph below, is a burst transfer speed that was very impressive to begin with; however as the write process continued the write speed dropped significantly. In the first screen shots below you can see the USB 3.0 flash drive has a nice sustained transfer speed of 68MB/second. This is very close to the speed test we saw from the benchmark software. The second screen shot below shows the USB 3.1 flash drive with an average transfer speed of just 18MB/second. This is horrible. You can see the start of the write sequence to be over 200MB/second, but then drops significantly for a sustained write speed.

Why such a slow transfer speed for the USB 3.1 device?

The device got very hot during operation and when the USB controller gets to hot, their speed is throttled back to manage the heat temperature of the chip, while at the same time providing some level of performance while writing. We cannot say for certain this is the cause, but heat is a big reason for dropped performance.

Looking at the data above, it would be important to understand how a device works with a larger data load before making a purchase; rather than marketing material to define write speeds. Granted, for some applications the sustained transfer speed is not that important, or maybe the user doesn’t want to put in the effort of testing for purchase of a single drive. However, if a company is planning a bulk purchase of USB 3.1 flash drives, it would be worth the time to determine the quality of product. It is common for companies to use a USB flash drive duplicator for data loading to bulk flash drives. A common example of a company needing bulk USB 3.1 flash drives and a flash memory duplicator would be restore images put to flash memory for computer installations out in the field. Typically a company will prefer an offline restore medium in case equipment is failing and reimaging is required. This is true because many times when a computer system needs to be restored the online connection to download an image file might be too slow, or computer not working properly, or the operating system infected. Having an offline restore device, such as a flash drive, is mission critical for those who need it.

Is it worth buying a USB 3.1 Flash Drive?

The value of buying a USB 3.1 flash drive will depend on the performance of the device in question. Trying to get data from the manufacturer is your best answer to speed questions when it comes to write speeds for a USB 3.1 flash drive.