How can you tell how fast a thumb drive is?

[Mac1337]

I am really disappointed with my USB2 Apacer. It might as well be USB 0.1. Looks like they come in different read/write speeds but it is nowhere mentioned.

[jdc]

they are all slow =(

too bad FW ones never took off

[Z]

The system profiler should tell you whether it's operating on 1.1 or 2.0... though yes, they're never terribly zippy.

Z

[Racer X]

do you mean how can you tell if Brand X is faster than Brand Y, or how to measure the speed when you get it home?

[Lux Interior]

Mine did abut 70 MPH in the spin cycle Saturday.





Still works fine (even went through he dryer).

[Psurfer]

Try thumb wrestling it.

[OWC Jamie]

I use them all the time to transfer a 1.2G file.

A generality:
The cheapie ones are slow.
Not necessarily 1.1, just slow.

If when buying, they don't brag about speed, it's not fast. :-)

[LyleH]

I have a G4 MDD dual 1.25 with a USB 2.0/Firewire card installed. Using an Emprex 2 GB Flash Drive I got from Fry's about a month ago, I did a rough speed test.

Connected to a powered 1.1 hub with 486mb of pictures - took 12 minutes 47 seconds.
Connected to the USB 2.0 card the same folder took 1 minute and 41 seconds to duplicate it.

I was pleasantly surprised at the USB 2.0 speed. YMMV

Also, my Canon Canoscan 8400F scanner is about 5 times faster when using the USB 2.0 card. Again, YMMV

LyleH