Hey everyone! A few hours ago, I bought a brand new Kingston DataTraveler Exodia M with 128GB capacity from a local store. I checked the speeds on Kingston's website before purchasing, but when I got home and ran a test with CrystalDiskMark, the speeds seemed really poor. I can't attach pics, but here's the table with my results:
|Test Type|Read (MB/s)|Write (MB/s)|
|:-|:-|:-|
|SEQ1M/Q8T1|83.11|10.25|
|SEQ1M/Q1T1|78.26|12.55|
|RND4K/Q32T1|5.68|1.61|
|RND4K/Q1T1|3.71|1.23|
I'm wondering if these speeds are normal for this type of USB or if I just ended up with a lousy drive. I worry I can't return it now since I had to tear open the packaging. What do you guys think?
4 Answers
If you want a better option, Kingston does have some fantastic flash drives with much faster speeds. I've been using the Kingston DataTraveler Max, and it performs really well for both reading and writing. You might want to check that one out for your future needs!
Did you check if your computer's USB port matches the version of the drive? Sometimes performance can vary if the drive is plugged into an older USB port.
Yeah, those speeds are pretty much what I'd expect for the Kingston DataTraveler Exodia M. It's a budget USB 2.0/3.2 Gen 1 drive, which means you’ll see slow write speeds. The read speeds are decent for general use, but those write speeds under 15MB/s are pretty typical for this model. It's not a defect—it's just not meant for high-performance tasks!
Honestly, most affordable USB sticks are around those speed ranges these days. They tend to use cheaper QLC flash and lower bandwidth interfaces. So, the speeds you saw don’t really surprise me, especially since the specs or data sheet might not state any guarantees for speed. Don’t worry too much about it!
Yeah, according to my device manager, both the USB port and the drive are compatible with USB 3.0 and USB 3.20 eXtensible, so that shouldn't be an issue.