Slow transfer speeds to USB 2.0 flash drive

I am reluctant to perform this change as I often forget to perform that "remove safely" task.

It's the wanting the cake and eating it too sydrome I know, but the only reason I hang off on applying this change is due to the fact that I have my laptop (originally with vista installed) but i purchased an additional SSD and now have dual-boot and my main on my SSD is now Windows 7.

Using the same USB stick on both my desktop and laptop and using the same file I notice speeds of approx.

Desktop: 4-5 MB/s (on a file of 1GB)- and yes if I click cancel it freezes on my system too

Laptop : 12-20 MB/s

I have verified that my Policies tabs are identical, that is to say my laptop is not set to Performance settings and still achieves the desired speeds without having to worry about disconnecting properly. How can I replicate these speeds on my desktop (more powerful) without sacrificing ease of use?

I have deduced that my drivers are up-to-date of coarse.

Cody,

You can search for slow USB speed and get tons of results.  I have the same problem with Win 7 ultimate.   While I had both windows 7 and windows XP installed on my machine, XP copied to USB flash drives more than 10 times faster, especially copying large directory structures.   Speeds grind down to 1mb-3mb/sec in Windows 7 and XP, on the same machine using the same ports, gets between 25mb-40mb/sec.   

I removed Windows XP a few months ago, so now I boot Linux Mint, when I need to copy  a large directory to a flash drive.  Its so much faster to boot from Mint, do the copy, then boot back to Windows 7, when I have a large amount to copy.

I have had this problem even after reloading Windows 7 from scratch.  All updates are installed and all drivers as current.  I also upgraded to a newer mobo and faster CPU and I still have the same problem with Windows 7 flash drive copy.  USB Hard drives seem to work OK. 

If you think 4mb/sec is normal, then you might have a hardware problem.  Try downloading a Linux Mint DVD. (You can boot from the DVD) and try a large copy.  If you still only get 4mb/sec, I would try it on a different machine.

Cody,

Have you or anyone in your community figured out why USB and hard drive transfer rates are slow in 7 compared to XP.  My Dell Studio 1735 has a 4 GB ram and 2.1GHz Dual core.  With two hard drive bays, I installed XP pro on one and 7 Ultimate rumah dijual x64 on the other.

The 7 had rates ranging from 466Kb /s to 8 Mb /s  (up to 25 Mb /s when transferring to 2nd hard drive).

The XP ranged from 5Mb /s to 20+Mb /s (up to 40Mb /s when transferring to 2nd hard drive).

After searching online, I see this is a common issue with Vista / 7.

Any reason why this is?  Or suggestions to increase the USB transfer?

Hi I usually use tune up utility from windows to increase the file transfer, here you can improve computer performance and choice specific area like usb

I have been through a similar process - I'm also running Windows 7, with a machine that is less than a year old (8gb RAM so it shouldn't be a capacity issue) and have tried optimising my USB drives. I didn't have this problem with smaller USB flash drives (less than 8gb capacity), but speed dropped dramatically when I bought a 32gb drive. Thinking that it might just be this particular faulty drive, I have since bought a Toshiba 64gb Hi-speed USB 2.0 (which even says on the packet Windows 7 supported) and have the same problem. I'm trying to back up a 2gb file and I'm only getting a transfer rate of 4.6kb per sec - at this rate it would take over 24 hours!

Come on Microsoft - a PC user should just be able to plug and copy without any technical knowledge at all!

I experienced the same problems as discussed above viz. extremely slower pace of file transfer to USB flash/pen drives in hp ProBook laptop running Windows 7 which often caused the system to hang due to which either the process had to be ended from the Windows task manager or the USB drive had to be plugged out forcibly as "Safely Remove Hardware" would not work. Even using the task manager to stop the "hanged" process of file transfer to/from USB pen drive would cause the Windows Explorer to crash/stop working. HOWEVER WHENEVER I CONNECTED EXTERNAL MOBILE HARD DISK DRIVES OR OTHER USB DEVICES SUCH AS NIKON COOLPIX CAMERA OR IPHONE TO THE SAME USB PORT, THEY WOULD JUST WORK FINE. In other words the problem was with USB flash/pen drives only which but worked just fine in other machines running Windows XP or other OS.

THE ABOVE MENTIONED SOLUTION OF "Optimizing for performance" through Device Manager which in case of Windows 7 is to select "Better performance" instead of "Quick removal" SEEMED TO HAVE WORKED INITIALLY IN MY CASE BUT THE SAME PROBLEM RETURNED WHEN I PLUGGED IN THE USB DRIVE A FEW DAYS LATER.

Would like to add two important things- (1) The option for "optimizing" the USB flash drives appears in the Disk Drives folder of Device Manager only if the drive is plugged in. (2) Every new USB flash/pen drive needs to be individually "optimized" using the same procedure as explained by ArcAiN6.

MICROSOFT MUST ADDRESS THIS ISSUE IMMEDIATELY.

-SGQ-1B/US/GTK/190612. Edited on 22-June-12