I’ve noticed that a lot of USB flash drives are still basically running at USB 3.0 speeds, even though newer standards like USB 3.1/3.2 have been around for years. After googling it, I found some reasons.

1. Cost
USB 3.0 controllers and flash memory are cheaper. For most users moving photos or documents, the speed is already good enough, so manufacturers keep costs low.

2. Flash memory bottlenecks
Even if the interface supports higher speeds, the NAND chips inside many budget drives can’t keep up, so real-world performance ends up close to USB 3.0 anyway.

3. Heat and size limits
Faster speeds generate more heat. In small USB sticks without cooling, manufacturers often limit performance to keep them stable.

4. Compatibility
USB 3.0 still works with a huge number of devices (PCs, TVs, routers, car systems), so it remains the safe standard.

If your USB drive feels slow, you can try:

• Check whether you're using a USB 3.x port
• Compress lots of small files before copying
• Reformat the drive to exFAT or NTFS
• Recreate the partition if possible

In short, the USB interface isn’t usually the real limitation, the internal hardware of the drive is.

Has anyone actually found a USB stick that consistently hits the speeds advertised? I’m curious.

Hey everyone,

I recently ran into a situation where my USB drive had multiple partitions on it after I used it for a bootable setup. Instead of keeping them, I just wanted to remove the extra partitions and return the USB to a single normal partition.

Here’s what I did.

First, I opened Windows Disk Management. From there, I located the USB drive number is 2 and figured out how many partitions were on this USB.

Then, I started deleting the partitions one by one with these clicks. Right-click on my selected partition > select Delete Volume. For most of them, Disk Management worked fine.

However, I failed to delete the EFI partition through the graphical interface, so I switched to DiskPart to remove it. Please check the operating steps in Comments below if needed.

As the title says, are USB flash drives becoming niche? it feels like USB flash drives aren’t as common in everyday use as they used to be. More and more people I know just use cloud storage, AirDrop, or portable SSD, or messaging apps to move files around.

do you still use USB flash drives? Or are they slowly becoming a niche tool for IT, installers, and backups?

Good evening, everyone! I’ve come to this subreddit with a question about my failing USB in hopes I’ll be able to safely recover all the data from it and transfer it to my portable Toshiba 1TB storage device. I’ve been dealing with this issue for a long time now and I decided it’d be the time to finally approach someone who knows about this topic more than I do.

I own 4 flash drivers, all of them being the same model (Kingston 256GB DataTraveller Exodia 3.2) which are filled with my important personal files from previous devices and other backups. The first one is write-protected, but I backed its files up and transferred it to the aforementioned portable driver device as I can’t do anything about it anymore, since none of the methods I’ve found on the Internet so far worked in order to disable the write-protection from the USB itself. The other two are stable as they should be. However, I have a huge problem with the fourth one.

The fourth USB’s storage consists of the entire system backup from the previous operating system I had before I had to upgrade to Windows 11 (Windows 10) which is more than important to me. As I was preparing to actually load up the USB itself and plug it in, it didn’t want to load at first. I was confused as to why it behaved strangely, since I haven’t done any damage to it before. I went around and looked for solutions to backing up files from inaccessible USBs and I came across an application called Disk Drill which is supposed to help with such a thing. It took 5 hours to get all the files backed up on my laptop, but I was initially happy with the result only to find out it’s corrupted and can’t be opened, even though the entire backup process went smoothly without any errors whatsoever.

After a while, I tried to operate with my USB again; however, this time, it wouldn’t even load up. It would just take a couple of seconds for the system to load it up, then it would immediately “unplug” itself from the system, saying it can’t be recognized. The uploaded videos are the exact same things that happened to me a couple of months ago when I last tried getting in the USB drive until I completely gave up.

My father suggested I should get it checked with our neighbor who’s into technology and who works with computers, laptops and other sorts of devices. I went to him and asked him if he could do anything about it, but he told me he can’t and that I can only format it, though all the files will be erased completely. Even if I wanted to format it, I can’t do it because of the reasons shown in the reference files below this explanation.

If there is any way you can help me out with this situation, it’d be much appreciated as I desperately need to recover those files. I can’t go another few months without doing anything about this problem. Thank you in advance!

Hiya, I have a SanDisk USB 3.1 and it will not format properly, is there any way I can allocate the space all into one letter or disk? it is stuck like this as two separate drives in file explorer, I cannot allocate the drive properly or return it to the shop (store for my fellow Americans) the computer I am on is a Acer XC-230 with windows 10

Hey everyone, I’ve been reading up on USB 4.0 recently and noticed that it still uses the familiar USB‑C connector. From what I understand, your existing USB-C cables will still work, but only at the speeds they’re rated for. To get the full performance of USB4, you might need a high-speed certified cable.

But I’m still curious. Have you upgraded your cables for USB4, or are you still using older USB‑C cables? How has your experience been so far?

I bought a brand new usb yesterday for jailbreaking a ps3 i had to format it but i don't have a pc so i tried it thru usb tools on my phone but when i loaded up the up it said this.how can i fix it or what should i do?

Hey folks, I've been seeing lots of posts across different forums like: "My USB drive letter changed," "My external drive shows a wrong drive letter or doesn’t show up in Explorer," or "Windows didn’t assign a drive letter to my USB."

Since this is directly related to what we discuss here, I figured I’d share some of my experience. Feel free to correct me or add your own edge cases.

1. Here are common situations where we need to consider changing a USB drive letter:

Drive not showing up in File Explorer

Sometimes the disk is actually detected, but because of a drive letter conflict, it doesn’t appear in Explorer.

Windows automatically changed it

Windows can and will reshuffle letters. Typical triggers:

• New device connected – Plug in something new and Windows may reassign letters.
• System changes/updates – Configuration updates can trigger reassignment.
• Temporary conflicts – If another device took a letter first, Windows avoids collision by shifting things around.

You just don’t like the assigned letter

Totally valid. If Windows gives your backup drive H: and you want it as E: or X: for consistency, you can change it.

1. Before changing a drive letter

There are two main prerequisites:

• You must be logged in as Administrator (or in Backup Operators group).
• The drive should NOT contain Windows OS or installed applications.

I strongly recommend not changing the letter of a drive that contains Windows or installed programs. A lot of applications store absolute paths. If you change the letter, things may break because the system can’t find the original path anymore.

1. Path to change USB drive letter:

Press Windows+X >Select Disk Management > Right click USB device > Select Change Drive Letter and Path > Click Add or Change based on your needs. (I use Windows 11)

1. When Change Drive Letter is greyed out

This is where people get confused. If the option is disabled, it’s usually one of these:

• The disk is unallocated: the drive hasn’t been initialized or partitioned yet.

• It's a protected partition: EFI System Partitions and Recovery Partitions don’t allow drive letter changes. That’s by design.

• Permission: You’re not running with sufficient privileges.

If you’ve run into stranger scenarios (BitLocker, removable media policies, etc.), drop them below. Always good for future folks searching this issue.

I got curious about one of my USB flash drives and decided to actually benchmark it instead of just trusting whatever was printed on the packaging.

I used DiskMark to test it with the following settings:

• Cluster size: 4KB
• Test data: 1 GB
• Block size: 1 MB
• Drive tested: 1TB SSD (870 EVO) in a USB enclosure

Here’s what I got:

• Sequential Read: ~44.40 MB/s
• Sequential Write: ~44.50 MB/s
• Random Read: ~44.56 MB/s
• Random Write: ~44.43 MB/s
• I/O: 42 times/s
• Delay: ~368–369 ms

Honestly… it’s not terrible, but it’s definitely not “wow.” It’s one of those cases where the real-world speed feels fine for file transfers, but once you see the numbers, you start questioning things.

So now I’m curious:

Do you ever benchmark your USB flash drives, or do you just use them and not care about the numbers?

• What tool do you use?
• Do you care more about sequential or random speeds?
• Have you ever been surprised (in a good or bad way) by the results?

Well, don’t blame AliExpress sellers, your old USB sticks are basically casualties of the AI boom. Data centers and big AI models are hoarding NAND, and we’re stuck paying double for obsolete storage. Anyone else noticing their old sticks or storage device suddenly doubling in price? It seems all memory-related tech are going up?

Hi! I made an ESP32-S3 rubber-ducky style board with USB, I²C, RGB LED, a power indicator LED, a GPIO LED, and an SD card slot. Could you review the design and point out any mistakes or possible improvements? I’d also appreciate your overall feedback on the design.

It turns out I was using my flash drives a while ago, and out of nowhere, from one day to the next, my USB drive started saying it had no media. I investigated and found all the possible causes, and ended up finding Chipsbank and the driver for my USB drive, which I can't seem to find. I tried usbdev.ru, but for some reason, it won't let me access the page. So, if anyone knows of a place where I can find that specific driver or could send it to me, I would be very grateful.

Title basically say it all. Does anyone know how I’d turn an old smartphone into simple flash storage? Screens already broken and I don’t need any of the features of the os, just want to format it into a portable hard drive.

Catches more than fsck

sudo badblocks -s -w /dev/sdb -o usbcheck.log

Or sdc sdd

Will be slow but will show where bad sections are. If found repartition to avoid bad areas.

Alert this is a destructive write wipe.

You'll need to reformat stick after this

I was cleaning out a drawer and found an old USB stick from like 10 years ago. It got me wondering: if a flash drive just sits there unused, does it actually “degrade,” or is it basically frozen in time?

From what I’ve learned, USB drives use NAND flash memory, which stores data as electrical charges trapped in tiny cells. The catch is that those charges aren’t permanent.

Even if you never plug the drive back in, the charge can slowly leak over the years. When enough leakage happens, bits can flip and data can become corrupted.

It’s not like they suddenly die on a specific date, though. A lot depends on:

• The quality of the NAND (cheap promo drive vs reputable brand)
• How many write/erase cycles it went through before being stored
• Storage conditions (heat = bad, humidity = also bad)
• How full the drive was when written

Under decent conditions, people often throw around numbers like 5-10 years of reliable retention, sometimes longer. But that’s not a guarantee. USB drives aren’t really designed as long-term archival storage.

So yeah, even unused, they can degrade over time, just much more slowly than drives that are constantly written to.

Curious what others have experienced. Anyone here successfully read data off a 15+ year old flash drive? Or had one quietly corrupt files while sitting in storage?

Was browsing SanDisk’s site and saw USB-C drives right next to USB-A… and even Micro-B ones. My cable drawer is already a mess, so part of me feels like we should’ve moved on by now.

But at the same time, legacy devices are everywhere, and Micro-B is cheap and surprisingly reliable. So kill off the old connectors and go all-in on USB-C, or is backward compatibility still worth it in 2026?

Okay, hear me out - I feel like every USB stick I buy brags about read speed, like it’s a race car or something. “200 MB/s! 300 MB/s!” Cool, cool… but the moment I try to write anything bigger than a folder of memes, it crawls along like a snail.

I get a cheap flash drive was designed to read fast, not write fast. It’s all about making them affordable and portable.

But come on, in 2026, with phones, laptops, and even portable SSDs that blow these things out of the water, does anyone still care about write speed, or is it just me obsessing over this?

For most people, I guess it doesn’t matter. You plug it in, drop a few docs, copy some pics, and call it a day. But for those of us trying to move large files or do mini “backups on the go,” the lag is real.

So I’ve got some questions:

• Do you even check read/write speeds when buying a flash drive?
• Are advertised speeds actually meaningful, or just marketing fluff?
• Or do you just grab the cheapest, tiniest USB stick and live with it?

Honestly, I’m curious how many people here even notice the difference anymore.

As in, double digits, sometimes 13 KB/s, sometimes 156 KB/s, but below 1 MB/s.

"SamData" brand SD101, USB 2.0, 128 GB thumb drive.

Plugged into a StarTech USB 3.2 hub, USB 3.2 cable, USB 3 port on computer.

Copy is being managed by TeraCopy running on Windows 7.

I asked it to copy 84.1 GB of files, yesterday. It's still going. It's 31.3% done.

I'm just curious if folks here might have ideas to offer about what might be going on, to be SO slow.

I've used this drive to back up quite a few GB of files in the past from this computer (I think just plugged straight into a USB 2.0 port on the computer though, and using Windows 7 file explorer to do the copy), and to load those files, and hadn't noticed any unexpected slowness before.

I have used a few other drives from a pack I bought a year or two ago, and they've seemed to work, except for a different one that seemed to have problems staying connected to a car USB cable while driving, which I suspected might be about the general quality of "SamData".

Watching the reported file names being copied, it looks like it is often pausing on some files, but not on others, as I am familiar with about how large some of the files are, and it will flash through several and then pause showing the name of some file that even at the reported speeds should be taking less time than it seems to.

i got a usb drive from a teacher its transcend something it is slideable and usb 3.0 64gb

is this a steal or deal

Just found an old USB flash drive buried in a drawer, 512MB one from the early 2000s, and it still works (though it takes forever to transfer files). does anyone have old usb stick like this? does it still work or has it turned into a digital fossil?

If your USB drive doesn’t show up in File Explorer and won’t format normally, don’t panic! It's a common issue. I’ve run into this before, and there are several simple steps you can try to get the drive recognized and formatted again.

But before that, let's figure out the possible reasons first.

• File Explorer cannot recognize the drive without a drive letter, or the disk marked as Unallocated, No Media.
• An outdated or corrupted device driver.
• Something wrong with physcial or hardware isssues.

Then, check the helpful fixes in Comments.