Slow USB 3

[Giraffe]

I've several USB 3 sticks: Transcend rated at up to 50MB/s and Lexar rated at up to 150 MB/s.
Transcend does about 14MB/s and Lexar about 22MB/s in both USB 3 and USB 2 ports.
The drivers are all up-to-date, ACHI is enabled
Tested with a 550MB folder with a few dozen media files in it.
The ports are straight from the header on the MoBo.

I would like to see higher speeds as I use the sticks for backup.

[Dashers]

"up to" is a bit of a get out clause. Double-check that the rating isn't in mega-bits per second and not mega-bytes per second.

Also, how are you measuring these speeds? Download CrystalDiskMark or similar and run it against the sticks. Run against anything the different I/O methods produce wildly different numbers, and you can be assured that the manufacturer will pick the highest number regardless of whether it reflects common work loads.

My SSD does 2.5GB/s - providing you have a big enough queue depth, which isn't often for me...

Also, where are you getting the data from? You can only write as quickly as you can read from the source (and visa-versa).

And, have you tried in somebody else's computer?

[Giraffe]

Yes, like Windows is 'up to 100% flakey free'
CrystalDiskMark gives about 34MB/s; my own test was from a SATA 3 HDD that gets 5.9 on Windows performance - I wouldn't expect that to be any highr, as there has to be room for an SSD to go to max.

No other computer, as I don't have access to one.

[Giraffe]

Yes, like Windows is 'up to 100% flakey free'
CrystalDiskMark gives about 34MB/s; my own test was from a SATA 3 HDD that gets 5.9 on Windows performance - I wouldn't expect that to be any highr, as there has to be room for an SSD to go to max.

No other computer, as I don't have access to one.

Interesting: just tried the same Lexar in a USB 2 port - same figures. Methinks a look inside might be in order, as I might have got the wrong header. Whoever thought that black MoBos and cases black inside and 2-point legends were good...!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 5.2.0 (C) 2007-2016 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes

Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 34.439 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 29.859 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 4.332 MB/s [ 1057.6 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 0.647 MB/s [ 158.0 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 34.182 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 29.363 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 4.047 MB/s [ 988.0 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 0.620 MB/s [ 151.4 IOPS]

Test : 1024 MiB [F: 0.1% (0.0/59.6 GiB)] (x1) [Interval=5 sec]
Date : 2016/11/08 16:06:53
OS : Windows 7 Professional SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x86)

[virtuo]

I thought USB 2 headers were different shapes to USB3?

If the speed is the same from both ports could it be the read rate on the drive you are copying from?

[Giraffe]

Just checked and the connection is correct.
The HDD figures are:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 106.669 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 100.610 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 1.014 MB/s [ 247.6 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 0.342 MB/s [ 83.5 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 108.006 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 99.414 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 0.411 MB/s [ 100.3 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 0.342 MB/s [ 83.5 IOPS]

Test : 1024 MiB [E: 55.6% (49.9/89.7 GiB)] (x1) [Interval=5 sec]
Date : 2016/11/08 16:55:12
OS : Windows 7 Professional SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x86)

So faster than the USB.

[Giraffe]

Tried enabling Smart Auto for USB in BIOS - no effect; fully enabled XHCI and got the following figures:

Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 124.346 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 78.885 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 7.425 MB/s [ 1812.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 0.910 MB/s [ 222.2 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 122.476 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 76.972 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 6.076 MB/s [ 1483.4 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 0.824 MB/s [ 201.2 IOPS]

Smart Auto is supposed to do this, well, automatically.

Seems to be OK now. Thanks for your help.

[mikerr]

Interesting: just tried the same Lexar in a USB 2 port - same figures. Methinks a look inside might be in order, as I might have got the wrong header.

Yes sounds like you're on USB2 still.

Although faster than USB2, most USB3 sticks struggle to get more than 45 meg/sec writes.

I use sandisk extremes - they're a bit bulky, but make all other usb drives look slow:

[Giraffe]

In spite of the gains, I've reverted to Smart Auto for XHCI. As I read it, Enabled could give a problem with USB keyboard/mouse pre-Windows. It also seems to slow down opening of apps. and other things.
Not worth it for the infrequent use of USB.