Sandisk Extreme 64GB - Slower write speeds after system format

Thank you for confirming what I have always said.  Don’t reformat a new drive unless you absolutely positively have to, large file sizes being the only example IMO.  I think you’ve gone as far as you can at this point.  If you need 4GB files to fit you have exFAT and NTFS as your options but there is a down side.

You could try enabling the drive caching capability but you have to be very very certain you always Safely Remove any flash drive you use in the machine.

Could You tell me how to get back to previous speeds ?

See if SanDisk will replace the drive.  But you will be back at FAT32 and limited to files 4GB or less.

@petermac wrote:

Could You tell me how to get back to previous speeds ?

I believe that was the “down side” Ed was referring to. You’ve crossed over and burned that bridge.

Sorry I don’t understand what you wrote too much with that bridge sentence :slight_smile: (I’m from Poland)

The expression relates to being able to go back once you have crossed over a wooden bridge.  If you burn the bridge after you cross it you can’t go back.  Commonly used when a person leaves a job to go to another one.  If he insults his old boss and company when leaving chances are he will never be able to go back to it.  If he leaves on good terms the possibility of being rehired is open.

hth

What you talking about:dizzy_face: ? what this have to my problem, I’m looking for real solution advice here to restore factory write speeds!

What factory is set default allocation size for this drive ? Of course I tried with “Restore device defaults” in format nothing help, and I think windows not recognize it correctly.

sandisk does not have a formatting tool for USB drives so I am not sure you are going to be able to get back the exact same offset. My 64GB USB 3 drive is FAT32 128kilobyte allocation size. 

Windows will not do FAT32 in partition larger than 32GB so you would need a third party formatting tool. No guarantee it will work but you can give it a shot. 

What you talking about ? what this have to my problem,”

You asked:

Sorry I don’t understand what you wrote too much with that bridge sentence

I tried to explain.

Ed_P - ok no problem :wink: thanks for explain.

I contacted with Sandisk support, told them everything, and they said there is no possible to delete default partition offset, with any format, and I don’t belive in that because I see how write this pendrive now, and how was before format.

Finally they don’t help me :frowning:

Please help me! I bought one of this and formated because had a virus, then I did a test with cristaldiskmark:
Read Speed: 34.24
Write Speed: 29.11

I tried to format it with fat32 with third party applications, and the speed remains the same, how do restore to factory settings? or what can i do?

If you bought it new, new as in from a major retailer vs eBay, then it did not have a virus.  Your AV was giving you a false positive, something Norton does frequently.

There is no way for reformat it back to factory specs.  Any type of formating you do will realign the clusters, create a MBR and create a partition table.  Sorry.

"what can i do?"

You can learn that formating isn’t a cure for everything. :wink:

well i’ve learned that “formating isn’t a cure for everything” but im looking for a solution to my problem,  i just want my USB get closer to the real speeds, after all you’re the expert here, right?

"you’re the expert here, right?"

:smileyvery-happy: Hardly, but thanks for thinking so.  :smiley:

The initial format is a super floppy format; no MBR, no partition table, is FAT32 and a cluster size that I don’t know.  It probably varies depending on the size of the flash drive.  I know of no app/utility that will recreate that format.  That doesn’t mean one doesn’t exist, just that I don’t know of one.

If you have an app/utility/way to format the drive with different cluster sizes try formating it with different sizes and see if ones are better than others for you.

This will definetely help!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FBHLnaJJ1Ev5b90lrNpJ6BUaQFvAFrrUFYErlhtIuLM/edit

Thanks panas.  An interesting read.

i just bought one usb3 sandisk extreme 64GB, at first the read & write speed were like 30 ~ 40 MB/s almost the same on both usb2 and usb3 ports, i thought it was strange i formatted the disk to NTFS quick format, but the speed didnt change,

i solved this problem by updating my motherboard drivers like intel chepset, intel rapid storage, bios others ,

after installing the drivers i restarted my pc, then the speed jumped to read speed around 150 ~ 250 MB/s

write speeds around  ~ 150 MB/s 

i was like whaaaat speed.

i think the problem most of the owners of this sandisk extreme usb3.0 is with drivers, formatting does virtually nothing.

i hope this helps.

What you need to do before you ever format a usb drive is copy down its current structure and information about alignment and such. Then duplicate the structure and alignment using a formatting tool. If you don’t know how to do that, you shouldn’t be reformatting it. 

Regardless, here’s a snapshot of of what the original factory default structure is like of a sandisk extreme usb 3.0 64GB drive

Use something like gparted (http://gparted.org/)) and make 32K block size, align to 32K, start of the partition should be at 32K as well.

If the drive is still slow try doing a full format, not a quick format.

What I’m surprised about is why doesn’t SanDisk just provide a tool that formats your drive to factory condition?

Because there is so little need to format the drives.