Time and Money, but Not Necessarily Speed: The Truth About Cheap USB 3.0 Drives
Inquiry Regarding the Sluggish Speed of Micro Center Flash Drives
Step foot into any electronics store, and you'll find USB flash drives galore, claiming to be USB 3.0 marvels. But do these pocket-friendly drives deliver on their promise of speed? More often than not, they don't, as our investigation uncovers.
You'd think that with USB 3.0, a faster connection would be a given. However, as our study shows, the reality is far from ideal. Many budget drives from the local retail waves feel more akin to their USB 2.0 counterparts, boasting USB 3.0 interfaces but transferring at less than 30 MB/s [source].
Why, despite the fancy label, do these drives lag behind such expectations? After cracking open a few of these drives, the answer becomes apparent. It seems they're packing old-school Phison controllers and NAND flash packages that find their home in run-of-the-mill USB 2.0 drives.
Even across the 32, 64, and 256 GB models, the same Phison controller is the culprit, although the PCB accommodates either twin TSOP packages or a single BGA package. As it turns out, the BGA package bears an uncanny resemblance to those found in the iPhone 8. Furthermore, the two 256 GB drives we bought boasted different Phison chips – one BGA and the other QFP. Interestingly, some drives use eMMC chips, as displayed in the video, showcasing their significantly faster performance.
In other words, it appears you truly do get what you pay for. The sub-$3 "USB 3.0" drives offer the advertised storage, but you'll need to factor in the extra time you'll be twiddling your thumbs waiting for transfers.
The budget drive manufacturers are placing cost before performance, often incorporating the least expensive controllers and NAND available. To add insult to injury, they rarely provide over-provisioned space, adversely affecting performance, especially as the drive approaches full capacity. So, what's a tech-savvy user to do to avoid these budget bottlenecks? Keep your eyes on the prize – splurge a little more, and you'll find yourself reaping the rewards of a speedier data flow.
Enrichment Insights
- Controller Capability: Many budget USB 3.0 drives use older, entry-level controllers (like certain Phison models) that lack the horsepower for high performance, often barely exceeding the throughput of USB 2.0.
- NAND Flash Quality: Cheap drives often use lower-quality or recycled NAND flash, which may yield slower write/read speeds and reduced endurance, much like those found in USB 2.0 drives.
- Single-channel Architecture: Some ultra-cheap drives utilize a single-channel NAND interface, limiting parallelism and thus read/write speeds.
- Interface versus Actual Performance: The USB 3.0 standard (now USB 3.2 Gen 1) theoretically supports up to 5 Gbps (~625 MB/s), but real-world speeds are much lower due to overhead and drive limitations.
- Bottleneck Beyond the Port: The USB 3.0 controller and port may be capable, but the performance is ultimately determined by the controller and NAND inside the drive.
- Vendor Cost-Cutting: Manufacturers of ultra-cheap drives prioritize cost over performance, often using the least expensive controller and NAND available, and offering little or no over-provisioned space.
- Real-world Implications: The "USB 3.0" label represents little more than a marketing ploy, as the drive's performance relies on its internal hardware rather than the interface. Furthermore, slow host systems, improper drivers, or file system issues can reduce speeds.
| Factor | Ultra-cheap USB 3.0 Drives | Higher-end USB 3.0 Drives ||-------------------------|-----------------------------------|--------------------------------|| Controller | Old, entry-level (e.g., Phison) | Modern, multi-channel || NAND Flash | Low-quality | High-quality || Performance | Sluggish (<30 MB/s) | Up to 400 MB/s || Over-provisioning | None or minimal | Plentiful || Price | Extremely low | High |
- The investigation reveals that many cheap USB 3.0 drives, despite using the latest technology, are equipped with old-school Phison controllers and low-quality NAND flash typically seen in data-and-cloud-computing devices such as gadgets of yesteryear.
- Contrasting cheap drives with their higher-end counterparts, the former often pack outdated Phison controllers, poor NAND flash, and lack over-provisioned space, leading to slow data transfer speeds and diminished performance, factors that make them look more like budget gadgets than cutting-edge technology.
