Two years ago I was looking for one of the fastest USB flash drive and after checking a lot of reviews, I found out that it was Corsair Flash Voyager GT. I bought it and was very satisfied with it. Honestly I did perform any speed test to confirm that it is one of the fastest because I can feel that it is faster than my other USB flash drives (PenDrive, SanDisk, Kingston) whenever I copy files to my Corsair USB flash drive.
fastest flash drive
Today I was browsing Nirsoft’s website and found out that one of the tool called USBDeview that I always carry along with me has been updated and a new SpeedTest feature has been added. I normally only use USBDeview to find out what USB device has been used on a computer and to uninstall the leftover USB device but now I can find out how fast is my USB flash drive. The best part is, I can even submit the speed test result to Nirsoft’s website after testing so me and other people will be able to easily compare the speed of many USB flash drives.

USBDeview’s interface is still the same when I reviewed it. To test the speed of your USB flash drive, plug the drive into your computer, and run USBDeview. Right click on the USB flash drive device listed in USBDeview and select SpeedTest. Alternative you can also use the hotkey Ctrl+T. When you see the SpeedTest window, click the Start Test button to start the speed test.

test usb flash drive read and write speed

USBDeview will start writing a large file into the USB flash drive, and then reading back the same file to getting the read speed. Do take note that you need at least 100 MB of free disk space in order to successfully make this speed test. After a few seconds you should get the read and write speed in Megabyte per second. Finally, you can publish the test result by clicking the Publish Test Result button. You get to enter a more detailed description of your USB flash drive and also your name. The speed test result page is at http://usbspeed.nirsoft.net/

As you can see on the list, my Corsair Voyager GT USB Device ranks number 20 out of 469 records on the write speed. In my personal opinion, some of the USB device ranked above me should not be counted because they are USB external hard disk drives. Flash Drives are memory devices that stores the data in flash memory, while USB external hard disks are regular hard disks plugged to USB that stores the data in magnetic surfaces, like the hard disk inside your computer. 2 years has gone by and my Corsair USB flash drive is still one of the fastest.

According to Nirsoft, this speed test is made with sequential read and write operations. When using multiple small files, the read/write performances are usually much lower than sequential read/write. This speed test may not be 100% accurate but the results page does give us some idea on the read and write speed on a lot of USB flash drives.

[ Download USBDeview ]

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