"Gorilla" USB flash drive painfully slow

Within the last year, I picked up a couple of these "rugged" drives to
use with both my Linux and Win 7 OS. The big issue I've noticed with
them is that they're slow with speed dipping down to less than 5mb/s.
My other USB thumb drives don't show this, only these. Any idea as to
the cause and remedy? I did try reformatting from FAT32, which seemed
to be what the drives used initially, to NTFS but no difference. I have
tried both USB2 and 3 ports, but speed is still as indicated.

Thanks,
AJ

Wolf K wrote:
On 2016-12-17 10:14, Aj St. Johns wrote:
Within the last year, I picked up a couple of these "rugged" drives to
use with both my Linux and Win 7 OS. The big issue I've noticed with
them is that they're slow with speed dipping down to less than 5mb/s.
My other USB thumb drives don't show this, only these. Any idea as to
the cause and remedy? I did try reformatting from FAT32, which seemed
to be what the drives used initially, to NTFS but no difference. I have
tried both USB2 and 3 ports, but speed is still as indicated.

Thanks,
AJ

I assume you're talking write speed. You can't change that, it's a
function of the drive's memory storage technology. I have a few cheap
old USB flash drives, they too are very slow writing, but fast enough
reading to play music through the car's USB port, so that's what I use
them for.

HTH


I noticed that when I went from 4GB RAM to 32GB, the write speed was
more than doubled (almost tripled) with the same pen drive and/or
external hard drive.

Aj St. Johns wrote:
Within the last year, I picked up a couple of these "rugged" drives to
use with both my Linux and Win 7 OS. The big issue I've noticed with
them is that they're slow with speed dipping down to less than 5mb/s. My
other USB thumb drives don't show this, only these. Any idea as to the
cause and remedy? I did try reformatting from FAT32, which seemed to be
what the drives used initially, to NTFS but no difference. I have tried
both USB2 and 3 ports, but speed is still as indicated.

Thanks,
AJ

Physically rugged but not electronically rugged.

If you look in the list here, there are some SLC flash sticks
listed, but at pretty high prices. Click the SLC item and look
at the prices.

http://www.digikey.ca/products/en/me...%20flash%20usb

Flash comes in three types:

SLC (one bit per cell, two voltage levels)
MLC (two bits per cell, four voltage levels)
TLC (three bits per cell, eight voltage levels)

The more voltage levels per cell, the smaller
the noise margins.

I can guarantee you that your Gorilla key is made with TLC.

If you see a 16GB or 32GB stick offered, chances are there
is a TLC based flash chip inside. The USB flash consists of
a controller chip, and one or two actual flash memory chips.
In the case of "multi-channel" sticks, the key is longer and
there could be as many as four flash chips. I don't think
they go much higher than four channels. SSD flash drives
on the other hand, use MLC (preferred) or TLC (not-preferred
but all too common), and in the case of some SSD drives,
they actually have a USB spigot on the bottom.

Adata 240GB external SSD $75
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820215012

(Cable to get from drive to computer...)
http://images10.newegg.com/ProductIm...215-012-12.jpg

I've lost a couple TLC flash keys. I opened them up on failure
and looked up the chip numbers for confirmation. The
stick manufacturer is not going to admit they are TLC. And
even when you see SLC for sale, you really have to
wonder what is inside the stick. (Especially if it was
offered on Ebay, home of fraud and counterfeit.)

I have an 8GB stick that has lasted forever, and without
opening it, it bears the hallmarks of *not* being TLC.
I got a year out of the TLC ones.

Paul

On Sat, 17 Dec 2016 16:38:01 +0100, Z wrote:

Wolf K wrote:
On 2016-12-17 10:14, Aj St. Johns wrote:
Within the last year, I picked up a couple of these "rugged" drives to
use with both my Linux and Win 7 OS. The big issue I've noticed with
them is that they're slow with speed dipping down to less than 5mb/s.
My other USB thumb drives don't show this, only these. Any idea as to
the cause and remedy? I did try reformatting from FAT32, which seemed
to be what the drives used initially, to NTFS but no difference. I
have tried both USB2 and 3 ports, but speed is still as indicated.

Thanks,
AJ

I assume you're talking write speed. You can't change that, it's a
function of the drive's memory storage technology. I have a few cheap
old USB flash drives, they too are very slow writing, but fast enough
reading to play music through the car's USB port, so that's what I use
them for.

HTH


I noticed that when I went from 4GB RAM to 32GB, the write speed was
more than doubled (almost tripled) with the same pen drive and/or
external hard drive.

I have a 64GB PNY that is horribly slow when backing up a large amount of
data. I suspect your write speed didn't actually increase with that 32GB
of ram, rather the data was being buffered. See how soon you can dismount
the pen drive. Of course, if you are moving really large amount of data
you will see it start off fast then slow down.

Z wrote:
Wolf K wrote:
On 2016-12-17 10:14, Aj St. Johns wrote:
Within the last year, I picked up a couple of these "rugged" drives to
use with both my Linux and Win 7 OS. The big issue I've noticed with
them is that they're slow with speed dipping down to less than 5mb/s.
My other USB thumb drives don't show this, only these. Any idea as to
the cause and remedy? I did try reformatting from FAT32, which seemed
to be what the drives used initially, to NTFS but no difference. I have
tried both USB2 and 3 ports, but speed is still as indicated.

Thanks,
AJ

I assume you're talking write speed. You can't change that, it's a
function of the drive's memory storage technology. I have a few cheap
old USB flash drives, they too are very slow writing, but fast enough
reading to play music through the car's USB port, so that's what I use
them for.

HTH


I noticed that when I went from 4GB RAM to 32GB, the write speed was
more than doubled (almost tripled) with the same pen drive and/or
external hard drive.

You may be observing the system *write* cache, that exists
under certain circumstances.

On a 64GB RAM machine, the write cache can be as large
as 5GB. Do not disconnect any equipment before such a
cache is emptied. This is one reason for using "Safely Remove",
as it should not give an indication a device is safe to remove,
until the write cache is completely drained.

You could adjust the properties of the device and
set it for "Quick Removal". In which case the bogus
"progress" indication you're seeing, would stop
being so bogus. Then you would see the true speed.
With some effort, you can defeat the system write cache,
which serves no truly useful purpose. It's just dangerous.

On SATA drives, whether Hotplug is enabled or disabled,
affects the write cache policy.

On Win7, use resmon to watch what is going on. The file
transfer dialog will disappear, but activity seen in
resmon will continue until the write cache is drained.
The write cache fills, if the source drive is faster
than the destination drive. If the destination is
a really fast device, the write cache should have
minimal content at the end of the transfer.

This is just a form of deception. If the destination
drive runs at 100MB/sec, then it cannot "consume"
all the data any faster than 100MB/sec. No matter
where the data is staged for transfer, it still
takes the exact same amount of overall transfer
time. You cannot defeat the laws of physics, with
a little RAM...

Paul

On Sat, 17 Dec 2016 16:38:01 +0100, Z wrote:

Wolf K wrote:
On 2016-12-17 10:14, Aj St. Johns wrote:
Within the last year, I picked up a couple of these "rugged" drives to
use with both my Linux and Win 7 OS. The big issue I've noticed with
them is that they're slow with speed dipping down to less than 5mb/s.
My other USB thumb drives don't show this, only these. Any idea as to
the cause and remedy? I did try reformatting from FAT32, which seemed
to be what the drives used initially, to NTFS but no difference. I have
tried both USB2 and 3 ports, but speed is still as indicated.

Thanks,
AJ

I assume you're talking write speed. You can't change that, it's a
function of the drive's memory storage technology. I have a few cheap
old USB flash drives, they too are very slow writing, but fast enough
reading to play music through the car's USB port, so that's what I use
them for.
I find that for Samsung, SanDisk, Corsair and a bunch more, for
most formats (USB, SDHC, SDXC, and more) it is possible to get the
sustained sequential write speed that the devices are rated at on the
packaging (say, 80MB/s and up), but often the sequential write speed
that you get is about 5MB/s.

The exact write operation that runs as full speed varies and likely
depends on the Device Properties tab "Polices" setting
for "Write caching and Safe Removal" ("Optimize for quick removal"
versus "Optimize for performance") and, for some devices that in
software look, I think, like "disks" not flash memory keys, there
is also a "Write-caching policy" that can be checked or unchecked and
may have "Turn-off Windows write-cache buffer flushing on the device"
as a sub-option.

Note that some devices write faster for what might seem to be
the safer, slower combination of options - I haven't figured out
exactly when devices work contrary to what I expect.

Most "SSD"s can copy files within the device at
"full" speed. In other words, if the device can do sustained
read at 500MB/s and also sustained write at 450MB/s, then you
can copy a file from one location to another on the disk
at 225MB/s.) Almost no "flash memory key", "USB key" or the
like can copy at anywhere near what seems it seems like
should be possible given the sustained read rate and sustained
write rate.

In addition, almost no SSD or flash memory key can maintain
the promised 4K random write or 4K random read rates if you mix
the operations. A slow down of a factor of 30 or more is common.

For example, perhaps a fairly high performance SSD can do single
thread 8000 reads or 13000 writes and even multithread 40000 reads
or 25000 writes. You might find that if you alternate reads and
writes the single thread rate goes down to far less than 4000 of each
and the multithread rate goes down to much less than 6500 read+write
[not rewriting same block: read and write locations are both random]



HTH


I noticed that when I went from 4GB RAM to 32GB, the write speed was
more than doubled (almost tripled) with the same pen drive and/or
external hard drive.
You might find that the system was flushing buffers for a minute or
more after the operation seemed to have ended and I/O counts for the
involved processes are no longer increasing. This flushing can take
more than 1 minute. Also, this seems to happen for some models of
devices even when you have turned on or defaulted to, optimize for
quick removal, which says you done have to use Safely Remove Hardware.

On Sat, 17 Dec 2016 13:03:15 -0500, Mark F
wrote:

On Sat, 17 Dec 2016 16:38:01 +0100, Z wrote:

Wolf K wrote:
On 2016-12-17 10:14, Aj St. Johns wrote:
Within the last year, I picked up a couple of these "rugged" drives to
use with both my Linux and Win 7 OS. The big issue I've noticed with
them is that they're slow with speed dipping down to less than 5mb/s.
My other USB thumb drives don't show this, only these. Any idea as to
the cause and remedy? I did try reformatting from FAT32, which seemed
to be what the drives used initially, to NTFS but no difference. I have
tried both USB2 and 3 ports, but speed is still as indicated.

Thanks,
AJ

I assume you're talking write speed. You can't change that, it's a
function of the drive's memory storage technology. I have a few cheap
old USB flash drives, they too are very slow writing, but fast enough
reading to play music through the car's USB port, so that's what I use
them for.
I find that for Samsung, SanDisk, Corsair and a bunch more, for
most formats (USB, SDHC, SDXC, and more) it is possible to get the
sustained sequential write speed that the devices are rated at on the
packaging (say, 80MB/s and up), but often the sequential write speed
that you get is about 5MB/s.

The exact write operation that runs as full speed varies and likely
depends on the Device Properties tab "Polices" setting
for "Write caching and Safe Removal" ("Optimize for quick removal"
versus "Optimize for performance") and, for some devices that in
software look, I think, like "disks" not flash memory keys, there
is also a "Write-caching policy" that can be checked or unchecked and
may have "Turn-off Windows write-cache buffer flushing on the device"
as a sub-option.

Note that some devices write faster for what might seem to be
the safer, slower combination of options - I haven't figured out
exactly when devices work contrary to what I expect.

Most "SSD"s can copy files within the device at
"full" speed. In other words, if the device can do sustained
read at 500MB/s and also sustained write at 450MB/s, then you
can copy a file from one location to another on the disk
at 225MB/s.) Almost no "flash memory key", "USB key" or the
like can copy at anywhere near what seems it seems like
should be possible given the sustained read rate and sustained
write rate.

In addition, almost no SSD or flash memory key can maintain
the promised 4K random write or 4K random read rates if you mix
the operations. A slow down of a factor of 30 or more is common.

For example, perhaps a fairly high performance SSD can do single
thread 8000 reads or 13000 writes and even multithread 40000 reads
or 25000 writes. You might find that if you alternate reads and
writes the single thread rate goes down to far less than 4000 of each
and the multithread rate goes down to much less than 6500 read+write
[not rewriting same block: read and write locations are both random]



HTH


I noticed that when I went from 4GB RAM to 32GB, the write speed was
more than doubled (almost tripled) with the same pen drive and/or
external hard drive.
You might find that the system was flushing buffers for a minute or
more after the operation seemed to have ended and I/O counts for the
involved processes are no longer increasing. This flushing can take
more than 1 minute. Also, this seems to happen for some models of
devices even when you have turned on or defaulted to, optimize for
quick removal, which says you done have to use Safely Remove Hardware.

Another thing I have noticed about the slow write speeds: the actual
writing as seen by the operating system may vary wildly, perhaps with
a cycle time of 5 seconds or so.

I had been using HD Tune Pro 5.60 on Windows 7 and 10 on various
machines with various devices for "File Benchmark" I used 30000 MB
or larger files so that memory caching wouldn't affect things [the HD
Tune Pro program should make sure of that regardless of the file
size, but I wanted to make sure that things were working that way.
I saw a write rate of around 5MB/s with many USB keys.

I then switched ran another copy of HD Tune Pro and used
"Disk Monitor". I saw that the write rate when from about 0 to about
35 MB/s over periods of a few seconds. When I used HD Tune Pro
File Benchmark for small files (e.g., 500MB) I saw the graininess
in the speed in the plot in the File Benchmark window also. This
"jerky" action is consistent with the size of the actual writes to
the NVM in the devices.

I did not notice the jerkiness for devices (usually SSDs) that had
long term sequential write rates and steady-state sequential write
rates, but I wasn't looking for such an effect when I was testing
stuff like Samsung SSD 850 PRO. (In particular, the write performance
of the 850 PRO seems to be more affected by the location of the NVM
actually being written to and multiple blocks are written to at the
same time the completion of one write when 3 others are running at
the same time and 100's of writes are completing each second would
not be noticed at a human scale, even though a completion of
1 write when it is the only write, at a rate of 1 device write
in 6 seconds is clearly visible.)

Paul wrote:
Aj St. Johns wrote:
Within the last year, I picked up a couple of these "rugged" drives to
use with both my Linux and Win 7 OS. The big issue I've noticed with
them is that they're slow with speed dipping down to less than 5mb/s. My
other USB thumb drives don't show this, only these. Any idea as to the
cause and remedy? I did try reformatting from FAT32, which seemed to be
what the drives used initially, to NTFS but no difference. I have tried
both USB2 and 3 ports, but speed is still as indicated.

Thanks,
AJ

Physically rugged but not electronically rugged.

If you look in the list here, there are some SLC flash sticks
listed, but at pretty high prices. Click the SLC item and look
at the prices.

http://www.digikey.ca/products/en/me...%20flash%20usb

Flash comes in three types:

SLC (one bit per cell, two voltage levels)
MLC (two bits per cell, four voltage levels)
TLC (three bits per cell, eight voltage levels)

The more voltage levels per cell, the smaller
the noise margins.

I can guarantee you that your Gorilla key is made with TLC.

If you see a 16GB or 32GB stick offered, chances are there
is a TLC based flash chip inside. The USB flash consists of
a controller chip, and one or two actual flash memory chips.
In the case of "multi-channel" sticks, the key is longer and
there could be as many as four flash chips. I don't think
they go much higher than four channels. SSD flash drives
on the other hand, use MLC (preferred) or TLC (not-preferred
but all too common), and in the case of some SSD drives,
they actually have a USB spigot on the bottom.

Adata 240GB external SSD $75
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820215012

(Cable to get from drive to computer...)
http://images10.newegg.com/ProductIm...215-012-12.jpg

I've lost a couple TLC flash keys. I opened them up on failure
and looked up the chip numbers for confirmation. The
stick manufacturer is not going to admit they are TLC. And
even when you see SLC for sale, you really have to
wonder what is inside the stick. (Especially if it was
offered on Ebay, home of fraud and counterfeit.)

I have an 8GB stick that has lasted forever, and without
opening it, it bears the hallmarks of *not* being TLC.
I got a year out of the TLC ones.

Paul

How are we supposed to know which has the specific types. I have been
using PNY, SanDisk, Patriot, generic, etc. brands. I noticed the bigger
and newer ones seem to have more problems and die sooner. My older
ones like 64 MB last longer and still work!
--
Quote of the Week: "The fact that we can't easily foresee clues that
would betray an intelligence a million millennia farther down the road
suggests that we're like ants trying to discover humans. Ask yourself:
Would ants ever recognize houses, cars, or fire hydrants as the work of
advanced biology?" --Seth Shostak
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In article , says...

Wolf K wrote:
On 2016-12-17 10:14, Aj St. Johns wrote:
Within the last year, I picked up a couple of these "rugged" drives to
use with both my Linux and Win 7 OS. The big issue I've noticed with
them is that they're slow with speed dipping down to less than 5mb/s.
My other USB thumb drives don't show this, only these. Any idea as to
the cause and remedy? I did try reformatting from FAT32, which seemed
to be what the drives used initially, to NTFS but no difference. I have
tried both USB2 and 3 ports, but speed is still as indicated.

Thanks,
AJ

I assume you're talking write speed. You can't change that, it's a
function of the drive's memory storage technology. I have a few cheap
old USB flash drives, they too are very slow writing, but fast enough
reading to play music through the car's USB port, so that's what I use
them for.

HTH


I noticed that when I went from 4GB RAM to 32GB, the write speed was
more than doubled (almost tripled) with the same pen drive and/or
external hard drive.

I bought two 64Gb Duracell branded drives. Slowest units I have by
far!!! That's comparing against various 8 & 4 GB flashdrives, I have no
16 or 32Gb flashdrives..

One of them after a bit decided to become read-only also deleting the
data on it. I had couple other copies of the data so being provided with
3 replacements without even be asked to ship back the original was nice.
Mind you took some time to even contact appropriate people and took
going directly to Duracell itself to resolve issue.

They certainly cannot be used for Readyboost

Ant wrote:


How are we supposed to know which has the specific types. I have been
using PNY, SanDisk, Patriot, generic, etc. brands. I noticed the bigger
and newer ones seem to have more problems and die sooner. My older
ones like 64 MB last longer and still work!

All my stuff 8GB and smaller still works. It was only the bigger
(TLC based) stuff that died on me.

There was a company last year selling SLC at moderately reasonable
prices. But I couldn't see them staying in business, and I couldn't
find them when I looked today. There are still SLC sticks for sale,
but the price is so high, you could buy a very nice SSD instead.
I was finding SLC sticks for sale today, in the $100 to $400 range.
For $400 I could buy a computer.

Paul

pjp wrote:
....
I bought two 64Gb Duracell branded drives. Slowest units I have by
far!!! That's comparing against various 8 & 4 GB flashdrives, I have no
16 or 32Gb flashdrives..

One of them after a bit decided to become read-only also deleting the
data on it. I had couple other copies of the data so being provided with
3 replacements without even be asked to ship back the original was nice.
Mind you took some time to even contact appropriate people and took
going directly to Duracell itself to resolve issue.

They certainly cannot be used for Readyboost

I never knew this battery company made USB flash drives. Ha. So far, PNY
and Patriot wanted ME to pay to return their broken 32 GB USB3 flash
drives. Stupid. I even offered to drop by in person when I was up there.
Bah. I said frak it and bought new drives. These drives seriously don't
last long enough.
--
Happy Holidays/Season's Greetings/Merry Christmas/Etc.
Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly.
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/ /\ /\ \ Ant's Quality Foraged Links: http://aqfl.net
| |o o| |
\ _ / Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail privately. If credit-
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Paul wrote:
Ant wrote:


How are we supposed to know which has the specific types. I have been
using PNY, SanDisk, Patriot, generic, etc. brands. I noticed the bigger
and newer ones seem to have more problems and die sooner. My older
ones like 64 MB last longer and still work!

All my stuff 8GB and smaller still works. It was only the bigger
(TLC based) stuff that died on me.

There was a company last year selling SLC at moderately reasonable
prices. But I couldn't see them staying in business, and I couldn't
find them when I looked today. There are still SLC sticks for sale,
but the price is so high, you could buy a very nice SSD instead.
I was finding SLC sticks for sale today, in the $100 to $400 range.
For $400 I could buy a computer.

Or buy many cheap USB3 flash drives. ;P
--
Happy Holidays/Season's Greetings/Merry Christmas/Etc.
Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly.
/\___/\ Ant(Dude) @ http://antfarm.home.dhs.org (Personal Web Site)
/ /\ /\ \ Ant's Quality Foraged Links: http://aqfl.net
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\ _ / Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail privately. If credit-
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In article ,
says...

pjp wrote:
...
I bought two 64Gb Duracell branded drives. Slowest units I have by
far!!! That's comparing against various 8 & 4 GB flashdrives, I have no
16 or 32Gb flashdrives..

One of them after a bit decided to become read-only also deleting the
data on it. I had couple other copies of the data so being provided with
3 replacements without even be asked to ship back the original was nice.
Mind you took some time to even contact appropriate people and took
going directly to Duracell itself to resolve issue.

They certainly cannot be used for Readyboost

I never knew this battery company made USB flash drives. Ha. So far, PNY
and Patriot wanted ME to pay to return their broken 32 GB USB3 flash
drives. Stupid. I even offered to drop by in person when I was up there.
Bah. I said frak it and bought new drives. These drives seriously don't
last long enough.

Duracell doesn't make the drives or even sell them. The just license
their name to someone else. That's the only way I got any warranty done
was the fact the guy at Duracell looked after licensing got involved.
Once that happened the company who actually should have responded simply
sent me an email stating they were sending me 3 replacement drives which
arrived few days later. I personally never had any contact with that
company other than this email. I don't think the Duracell guy was
"happy" with the licensing company as he stated they were supposed to
provide warranty as part and parcel of the contract and clearly they
weren't.

On 12/19/2016 6:57 PM, pjp wrote:
In article ,
says...
pjp wrote:
...
I bought two 64Gb Duracell branded drives. Slowest units I have by
far!!! That's comparing against various 8 & 4 GB flashdrives, I have no
16 or 32Gb flashdrives..
One of them after a bit decided to become read-only also deleting the
data on it. I had couple other copies of the data so being provided with
3 replacements without even be asked to ship back the original was nice.
Mind you took some time to even contact appropriate people and took
going directly to Duracell itself to resolve issue.
They certainly cannot be used for Readyboost
I never knew this battery company made USB flash drives. Ha. So far, PNY
and Patriot wanted ME to pay to return their broken 32 GB USB3 flash
drives. Stupid. I even offered to drop by in person when I was up there.
Bah. I said frak it and bought new drives. These drives seriously don't
last long enough.
Duracell doesn't make the drives or even sell them. The just license
their name to someone else. That's the only way I got any warranty done
was the fact the guy at Duracell looked after licensing got involved.
Once that happened the company who actually should have responded simply
sent me an email stating they were sending me 3 replacement drives which
arrived few days later. I personally never had any contact with that
company other than this email. I don't think the Duracell guy was
"happy" with the licensing company as he stated they were supposed to
provide warranty as part and parcel of the contract and clearly they
weren't.

Right, Duracell doesn't make the drives. I have a couple of Duracell
Compact Flash cards that are manufactured by Dane-Elec.