Sandisk Extreme 64GB - Slower write speeds after system format

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 ?

I’ve seen a lot of people post about slowness on their speedy drive.

There are a few reasons for why this is happening:

1: It’s plugged in a USB 2.0 slot. Generally, USB 3.0 slots are marked with a blue color, or they will have “SS”/“SuperSpeed” logo near them. Sometimes they will not, but this is fairly rare.

2: Chipset drivers. This is fairly common with fresh installs of windows 7, and sometimes with windows 8 depending on how new the motherboard is. Install USB 3.0 drivers and the speed will come back.

3: The device you are reading or writing to just isn’t fast enough. This is going to be the most common reason the transfer is slow for platter drives. The fastest platter drive with zero fragmentation is going to max out around 150-170 MB/s, the average consumer drive is going to be closer to 100-120 MB/s, and when fragmentation is thrown in that could be as low as 30-70 MB/s.

Sector size is a bunch of ■■■■. I’ve set my device to NTFS 4k, NTFS 32k, FAT32 32k, all 3 had the same sustained transfer rates of around 190 MB/s. Sure, there may be minor differences, and I suppose in the right situation/environment it could make a significant difference, but for a majority of people it will not change anything. Which, if you guys want an easy way to format the device into whatever file system - Rufus - http://rufus.akeo.ie/ will do anything you want.

4: The Sandisk Extreme 64 GB is literally a SSD hard drive on a USB Stick, except that there is no easy way to force the drive to perform a TRIM operation. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trim_(computing)

#4 is the one that will catch people eventually. The lack of trim support in windows really hurts the speed of the drive over time. Formatting the drive will not fix this, no matter how you format the drive. As the drive is used over time, and files are deleted in windows from the drive, windows never tells the controller on the drive where it has deleted files. So, it starts to stumble over itself trying to find empty space to put new files.

I’m honestly not sure if there is a way to force TRIM on the drive. However, there is a workaround, but unfortunately it’s not the easiest thing to do.

SecureErase.

SecureErase sends a command to the controller on the SSD, telling it to “shock” the drive and wipe everything on it. This resets everything on the drive, and effectively makes it brand-new again. Just be warned that it will not have a file system, it will be a raw drive that you will have to format to NTFS/FAT32.

Also, be warned that there are a lot of programs that use the words “SecureErase”, but they do not perform the function I mention above.

Unfortunately the only easy way to do this command is with parted magic.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1227597/how-to-secure-erase-your-solid-state-drive-ssd-with-parted-magic

Parted magic is so far the only thing I have seen that correctly sees the Flash drive as a SSD device with secure erase capability. However, it works. After a month of heavy-use, I was starting to get 20-30 MB/s write speeds on my device, and after running parted magic, the device was back to 190 MB/s.

(Part of the reason I’m posting here is hoping that someone has found a way to force trim/secureerase inside of Windows. :slight_smile: )

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Something that may throw a wrench in secure erasing the sandisk drive. I didn’t notice this because I have an SSD already in my computer, but apparently Parted Magic will not allow you to secure erase the Sandisk USB Drive if it cannot detect a hard drive with the capability to secure erase itself. It just disables that menu, not checking to see if the usb devices can, I guess.

Oh, and I forgot a step, when you open the “ATA Secure Erase” program in Parted Magic,  you will need to “Show all devices” 

After that, the USB devices will show up.

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Still have not a true answer, why i need care about my USB so much like that, i’m not a super advance user, why i need care about how to format my usb in a right way. after all my Extreme Pro sitll have  40MB/s speed (while it should 240Mb/s) :frowning:

-deleted-

Hello there,

I am in the process of replacing my first Sandisk Extreme 64 GB due to speed issues. I was tinkering with Parted Magic but I cannot make the flash drive appear on the list. The notice “This routine can only run for disks supporting the Security Mode feature set” keeps showing up. I managed to have my external USB HDD shown in the list, but not anymore.

How did you manage to make the flashdrive appear on the ATA Secure Erase list?

Thanks in advanced

Nevermind, I was running Parted Magic on a Virtual Machine. I burnt the iso on a Usb stick and booted my laptop to a true non-virtual Parted Magic session. My internal HDD was recognized and thus I could ATA secure erase my Sandisk Extreme.

Writing speeds went from 10 mb/s to 190. Could not be happier. :slight_smile:

Again, thank you for the tips on bringing this flash drive back to life. 

hey guys,

I’ve just bought a Sandisk Extreme 64 gb and wait for it… I’d like to format it to extFat, even before the first write/read. Reason: need/want larger files than just 4gb. So today I said to myself let’s a bit of reaseach and I was really afraid to find this thread and well here we are. I mainly bought this flash drive because its well promoted speed and don’t wanna lose this feature.

So for those who were able to recover original speeds (e.g with parted magic), have you guys formatted to fat32 or got the original speed with other formats?

Thanks,