3

Please see the following screenshot of transferring to a USB 3 sandisk flash drive:

enter image description here

This has been asked before but the answers didn't help. They always suggest changing this:

echo $((16*1024*1024)) > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_background_bytes
echo $((48*1024*1024)) > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_bytes

but this time, it does nothing for me. The xfer starts out somewhat fast and then slows to this pitiful speed, basically grinding to a halt. The file in the screenshot is only 2GB. If I were on Windows right now (Spooky thought) this would be no problem.

I would like to know every possible thing to try for this problem. All of it. Dirty dirty write, flushing, drivers, whatever. bring it.

5.3.0-28-generic

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2
  • Replace the flash drive? Are you sure that windows would write a 2GB file a lot faster?
    – icarus
    Commented Feb 15, 2020 at 0:46
  • Ewww, unhappiness. How was the USB flash drive formatted? FAT32, exFAT, NTFS, ext4? 2) What's the cluster size set to when formatted? 3) Is the tardiness consistent across multiple filesystems? 4) Many consumer systems require drivers for max speed w/ USB3, and sad to say, Windows gets drivers first. What's the make & model of the motherboard/laptop? If laptop, what is the model part number on the serial# sticker? 5) Which OS and release number? 6) What's the speed of an unladen swallow?
    – K7AAY
    Commented Feb 15, 2020 at 0:52

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
0

When a USB pendrive is getting slow (below half of the original speed), I wipe the whole device with mkusb. In other words, I overwrite the whole drive with zeros.

Then I create a fresh partition table with one or more partitions and file systems with gparted.

This way the memory cells can be remapped and

  • the drive speed is restored to almost the original one
  • the risk of failure and corruption is reduced.

See also this link: Pendrive lifetime.

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2
  • I don't think it's the drive. I'll verify that though and come back.
    – xendi
    Commented Feb 16, 2020 at 0:32
  • @xendi, I'm looking forward to your result, and to talk about possible next steps if necessary.
    – sudodus
    Commented Feb 16, 2020 at 9:27

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