USB Flash Drives

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A USB Flash Drive is a device that is a data storage unit for connecting to computers, consoles, tablets, smartphones, or any other device via a USB port.

USB flash drives emerged decades ago to replace other storage units like floppy disks, which were less convenient and less secure. USB flash drives are more durable because they are made up of memory chips that are unaffected by magnetic fields or impacts like floppy disks or hard disk drives (HDDs).

USB Versions, Interfaces, and Standards

The nomenclature in USB standards regarding data transfer rates or speeds is confusing. The reason for this confusion is that existing standards were renamed with a new identifier, and in some cases, this was done twice.

We should not confuse the maximum transfer rate indicated in the standard with the speed that the flash drive will actually offer. No USB 3.2 Gen 2 flash drive with a maximum speed of 1250 MB/s will offer that speed.

The best flash drives in terms of recording speed performance will only offer an average transfer rate higher than 60 MB/s.

Norma	Alias	Descripción de la norma	Interface Físico	Tasa máxima de transferencia
USB 1.0 y USB 1.1		Primera norma USB y en desuso a día de hoy	USB-A con el conector blanco o negro	12 Mbps (1,5 Mbytes/s)
USB 2.0	High-Speed USB	Esta norma estuvo vigente durante muchos años antes de ser actualizada, y es la evolución de la norma USB 1.1	USB-A con el conector blanco o negro	480 Mbps (60 MBytes/s)
USB 3.2 Gen 1	USB 3.0 USB 3.1 Gen 1 SuperSpeed	Inicialmente esta norma era denominada USB 3.0, luego se renombró a USB 3.1 Gen 1, y posteriormente de nuevo fue renombrada a la actual USB 3.2 Gen 1.	USB-A con el conector azul. USB-C	5 Gbps (625 Mbytes/s)
USB 3.2 Gen 2	USB 3.1 USB 3.1 Gen 2 SuperSpeed+	Inicialmente esta norma era denominada USB 3.1 y luego se renombró a USB 3.2 Gen 2.	USB-A con el conector azul. USB-C	10 Gbps (1250 Mbytes/s)
USB 3.2 Gen 2x2	USB 3.2 SuperSpeed 20Gbps	También conocido como USB 3.2	USB-C	20 Gbps (2500 Mbytes/s)
USB 4	USB4 Gen 2×2 USB4 20Gbps USB4 Gen 3×2 USB4 40Gbps		USB-C	10 Gbps, 20 Gbps, 40 Gbps (depende de las especificaciones del ordenador/host)
Thunderbolt 4			USB-C	40 Gbps (5000 Mbytes/s)

A standard indicating a maximum data transfer speed does not imply that the USB drive will consistently operate at that performance. In these cases, we prefer to refer to the maximum average read and write speeds specified by the manufacturer or obtained in various tests.

The same USB drive will deliver different performance depending on the environment:

Operation type: Read / Write / Read and Write.
Number of files and size of each file. Performance will vary significantly depending on the size and number of files in the operation. Transferring one 1 GB file is not the same as transferring 1000 1 MB files.
The content already exists on the USB drive.
The performance obtained on an empty USB drive can be significantly higher than that obtained on a USB drive already full of files and folders, where, due to its size, storing a new file requires it to be physically partitioned into different blocks in the USB drive's partition table within the memory chips.
Type and configuration of the computer's controller to which the USB drive is connected, that is, depending on the computer's internal hardware.

Read and Write Speeds of USB Drives

The values corresponding to the write speed are not usually provided by the manufacturer; they simply state that it is lower than the read speed.

The data that appears in our filters regarding write speed corresponds to performance studies carried out by ssd-tester, although performance varies significantly depending on the computer's hardware; that is, from one computer to another we can obtain significantly different write or write speeds.

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USB Flash Drives

USB Versions, Interfaces, and Standards

Read and Write Speeds of USB Drives