Sandisk Extreme 64GB - Slower write speeds after system format

Because there’s no need for people to hold files larger than 4GB on a 64GB drive.  You MUST be daft.

Formatting for files larger than 4GB is the only reason to format the drive.  But NTFS has overhead, namely journelling, and that slows things down.  If small cluster sizes are choosen that doesn’t help either.  And if the Windows system config for USB drives is set to Safety rather than Performance that also doesn’t help.

So you formatted your flash drive to NTFS and now you want to format it back to FAT32?

I had horrible horrible writing speeds close to stalling after a very very nice thrust up until the 1gb mark. And yes my usb3 works fine on my other usb3 devices. I then tried enabling caching, and i WAS sure to remove it correctly. Only trouble was windows froze the device at one point. Could not release it, nor shutdown windows. I even waited 10-15 min to be sure. Now the drive is “broken” ie i NEEDED to reformat it. Hasnt been the same since. anyway kinda seperate problem i guess.

My reason being here is you Ed_P. Although polite you are still being kinda ■■■■■■■■■. I’ve NEVER heard that you are not supposed to format drives of any kind. We have been using it as a basic feature in dos/windows since the floppy drives, wth are you talking about when you say you are not supposed to reformat from stock. Frankly i feel cheated there wasnt a big red sticker on the box of the product warning you of this. I can’t remember if this even came with a manual, but if it did, I read it. I always do, and I certainly don’t remember this written anywhere.

You are blaming PeterMac and Yanos43, basicly saying they did this to themselves.

Are you employed by sandisk or what? or selfproclaimed sandisk guru? I sure hope its the last, because you are bad advertisement sorry

EDIT: and I could not believe this drive got shipped with fat32. It’s 2014 why this **bleep** still exist. Imo reformating to a filesystem that supports 4gb+ files is an absolute must. For me drive is unusable without.

thanks to the last posts by people who came up with constructive replies

:smileyvery-happy:

 

We have been using it as a basic feature in dos/windows since the floppy drives,

 

but then you say

 

It’s 2014

 

Yup, it is 2014, and you can’t buy DOS floppies anymore and your machine is running Windows not DOS but you’re still doing things like it was 1974.  Why should SanDisk change when you haven’t?

 

FAT32 is a format that is compatible across multiple OSs, and multiple devices. People use removable devices in more than their 386 machines now days. Desktop machines, notebooks, ipads, tv, printers, etc.  Thus the use of the FAT32 format today.

 

But the FAT32 format is indeed an old format and people are creating files larger than 740 KB floppies.  So newer, larger drives have an exFAT format but they don’t work in all devices, most TVs for example. 

 

And yes, sometimes one has to reformat a device/drive to resolve a problem.  File size limitation, device corruption, etc.  But doing it for a reason is not the same as doing it because that’s what you have always done with floppies.

 

Whats the trouble, i say SINCE floppy drives. That includes up until 2014 and not just floppies. And with dos/windows i tried to illustrate the long period we have all been doing this. English is not my primary language, but im pretty sure this should be clear enough.

There is no need to degrade me like im a retard running a 386 with dos. In fact my first pc was a 286 with a EGA monitor D:

This is indeed news to me, but i don’t beleive im the only one formating with no hesitation whatsoever.

I guess i did not get the memo about when it became hurtfull to format your drives. Whatever technology they might be built on. Quite the opposite in fact, quite a basic feature in windows too


Again a warning would have been nice.

1 Like

:smiley:

English is not my primary language

Your English is just fine. 

There is no need to degrade me like im a retard

That was certainly not my intent.

In fact my first pc was a 286 with a EGA monitor

Yup, and it probably had 640 KB of RAM and a 20 MB hard drive.  Been there, done that. I understand.

This is indeed news to me, but i don’t beleive im the only one formating with no hesitation whatsoever

I understand and I agree but that doesn’t make it right.  Years ago, before antiviruses apps were common, malware could be spread on floppies, so to be safe when inserting a floppy you formatted it.  Quickly and without hesitation.  But things have changed, every new pc has a firewall and antivirus build in, floppies no longer autorun when inserted, and the capacity of the removable drives has grown from 740 K B to 64 GB and more.  Things have changed.  Guess what, so to should the automatic formatting action.

Again a warning would have been nice.

Be honest, would you have read it if one was included?  How many things in this life have you learned from making a mistake?  Fork is wall socket turns out the lights!!  Red wire in oven is HOT!!  Putting car in reverse when going 50 mph is a bad idea!!  Those are things I learned by doing.  Formatting a USB drive without cause is something you have now learned.  It’s how we learn.

Please keep the posts civil and on topic. Personal attacks are prohibited and will not be tolerated. This post will serve as the one and only warning. 

Forum Admin

slotmonsta

Personal attacks are prohibited and will not be tolerated.

 

Relax.  Nobody is attacking or being attacked.  Just two old timers having a discussion.

Hey Ed thanks for levelling with me :wink:

I did learn something today, and I’m the type that remembers stuff so i guess thank you for teaching an old dog some new tricks. Oh how i treasure old memories of playing some of my first pc games on this 286. Duke nukem 1, Golden axe, Alleycat etc D:

I think my device is broken now tho (sandisk extreme 64gb). My computer gets very slow and somewhat unresponsive when it’s plugged in. It was very bad after the unsafe removal, so i just formated and turned of cahing. It’s much better now but still leaves much to be desired concerning transfer speed. But at least it stopped doing that fast burst and then stall. Right now it’s runing at a pathetic 30-40mb/sec. I also have a transcend usb 3.0 stick and that one is working just fine


Would a low-level format be able to help in any way? getting it back to factory settings or close. Stumbled upon this HDD-LLF-Low-Level-Format-Tool

playing some of my first pc games on this 286. Duke nukem 1

 

Oh yes, I remember Duke Nukem.  Many, many hrs of it.  I wonder if I still have that on a floppy upstairs?  :smileyvery-happy:

 

Would a low-level format be able to help in any way?

 

I honestly don’t know.  But if it doesn’t work you can always reformat.  GD&R  :smileyvery-happy:

 

But before trying the low-level format try reformatting using different blocksizes.  If you’re currently using 8 MB try 4 MB.  If that doesn’t help try 16 MB.  I don’t know what the initial size was, maybe someone with more knowledge than I can step in and give a clue.  And try diskpart rather than the standard Windows format option.  Let us know what you try and how things turn out.

-update-

Checked out that link you posted.  It appears to be for hard drives only.

HDD Low Level Format Tool is a utility for low-level hard disk drive formatting.

So I don’t think it will help with the SanDisk drive.

It’s even in the title “HDD” haha i should have seen that. Will try different block sizes and that program you recomended and write my results here later.

Seems like i dragged this a bit off-topic :slight_smile:

Great success! I formated with diskpart and boom, device is now stable and responsive. Transfer speed got a big boost to a steady 100mb/sec which is a breath of fresh air. Still not monster fast but its stable now and fully functional for my needs. I could not find options to allocate unit size in diskpart, maybe it could get even better?

I had the same issue:

A formerly great performing Sandisk EXTREME Stick 64GB was down to 24MB/s write speed after formatting it to NTFS.

However, how weird is it that SanDisk doesn’t care to provide a Tool to help users store >4GB files

on the most common File System?

Instead we are blamed to have formatted our devices.

(Silly ideas these customers 
 )

Fact is that SanDisk does not provide adequate tools for aligning partitions / sectors properly.

Something that is well known to be important for drive performance.

Oh, of course that’s something SanDisk support doesn’t tell us.

I was able to fix the problem with HPUSBDisk.exe.
Remember: Don’t blame me, if something goes wrong! It’s your risk if you damage your Sandisk with that tool.

However, how weird is it that SanDisk doesn’t care to provide a Tool to help users store >4GB files

on the most common File System?

Actually they do.  It’s called 64GB flash drives formatted in the factory as exFAT, which supports files larger than 4GB.  Unfortunately they haven’t found ways to prevent users from blindly reformatting them with even trying them.  Then complaining about the drive they screwed up.

(Silly ideas these customers 
 )

That’s one way to describe them. :smiley:

BTW Current versions of Windows have support for formatting removable drives as exFAT built in.  No need to hunt for something else.  :wink:

First sorry for bumping old thread. (oh wait somone beat me to it yesterday!)

So i just browsed aliexpress for some cheap chinese usb drive for a keychain. In description the seller wrote : 

“You’d better not format your U disk causually because it is harmful.” (nice engrish)

I tried searching google for “does formatting damage flash drive”, and then i remembered this old thread.

It seems like the common knowledge and advice out there is : Go ahead format all you like, it only wears as much on your drive as a normal data write would. You have to dig a little deeper to find the skeptics. A few people on forums mention that some manufacturers now warn against formatting their drives.

But one thing i did learn was that formating or converting to NTFS is a bad bad idea (because of constant and increased activity) - not sure this was clarified in this thread.

So to summarize:

  1. Formating your drive makes it lose the custom logical block offset which was put in to provide (sometimes radically) improved transfer speeds.

  2. Don’t use the built in windows format. Use HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool for example.

  3. Use stock filesystem, if absolutely needed format to Fat16, fat32 or exFat as Ed_p said. Avoid NTFS at all cost

  4. If still too slow, try different block sizes.

  5. Ed_p is a tough nut to dance with, but he is alright after all :wink:

@ed_p wrote:

 

Actually they do.  It’s called 64GB flash drives formatted in the factory as exFAT, which supports files larger than 4GB.  

 

Oh yes now i feel like the kid, which brother got the bicycle with the colour i wanted :stuck_out_tongue:

 

Unfortunately they haven’t found ways to prevent users from blindly reformatting them with even trying them.  Then complaining about the drive they screwed up.

 

Oh, the blame the customer gag again
 nice. Again you CANNOT expect the customers to know this. It’s unheard off, and most above average users would just look at the fat32 and format it right away. You need specialised technical knowledge to know not to do this. Please dont tell me that the average user would never format, i can give you an example. Windows7 bought digitaly included a USB/DVD boot tool. If you don’t have a empty DVD or even a drive, you will pick USB right? It then requires you to format the disk. This comes with only 1 warning that the data will be wiped.

And congrats you now ruined your expensive 64 gb flashdrive, and youre gonna get blamed for it over and over again if you try asking in forums ^^

To all that flame people for formatting a flash drive or sd card:

I would rather format a drive over deleting 30,000 puny files and folders from a flash media. Formatting (quick format) only takes 30 seconds. Deleting 30,000 files can take forever.

most above average users would just look at the fat32 and format it right away.

Not if they are young users.  They buy something, expect it to work and use it.  Only if there is a problem do they look for something that may fix it.

You need specialised technical knowledge to know not to do this.

No, you just need to have less free time. 

And congrats you now ruined your expensive 64 gb flashdrive,

Have you written to Microsoft informing them their Windows 7 utility has ruined your flash drive? 

What format did the Windows 7 utility format the USB drive as?  NTFS?  Can you convert it back to exFAT and not loose the Windows 7 boot capability?

Since you seem a bit technical here’s another option.  The Windows boot functions create an ISO file before writing it to the CD/DVD/USB drive. Rather than have Windows write it to the USB drive, stop the function, then manually reformat the drive to exFAT and use RMPrepUSB to make the drive bootable and put the ISO file on the drive.  I believe RMPrepUSB supports that without reformating the drive.

I would rather format a drive over deleting 30,000 puny files and folders from a flash media.

30,000!!  Wow!!  That’s a lot of files.  Since I have never had to do that many on a USB drive I can’t imagine how long it would take.  If you’re happier with reformatting then by all means do it.

I guess everyone has their preference then.

What do I do if I didn’t save the Flash Disk details and partition ?