Everybody wants a faster storage media, be it your computer’s hard disk or a simple USB flash disk. The faster read and write speeds of the storage disks ensure that you won’t have to wait for the file copy operations to be completed for many hours. Some of the USB flash disks are high capacity but slow in read/write speeds and that becomes very annoying if you use them for backup of your important files. This is why should check the read and write speeds of the USB flash disks before using them for tasks that involve copying of very large files.
There are some easy ways to find out if your USB flash disk can read or write data at a high speed or not. The first method, that you probably already know, is the file copy operation dialog shown in Windows 8/8.1. Whenever you copy a file from one folder to another, it shows the write speed rate. You can use this to copy a large file (300 MB +) to your USB flash disk and see how much write speed you are getting. But you cannot view the read speed in this manner. Additionally, this works only for Windows users of newer versions of Windows.
The second method is by using a third party program called Check Flash. Developed by a Ukrainian developer Misha Cherkes Mihail. The program is designed to perform various diagnostic operations on the flash disks, but it can also show the disk read and write speeds for your USB flash disk.
To find the disk speeds using the Check Flash tool, first attach the target USB flash disk in your computer and then launch the Check Flash tool. Select the disk from the drop-down listbox and leave all the options at their default values. Just click on the Start! button and it will start performing the read and write tests on your USB flash disk. Depending on the size of the disk and USB version, it may take from 2 minutes to 20 minutes to complete. At the completion, you would be able to see the the disk read speed and the write speed under the Information section.
Conclusion: You can find out the disk read and write speeds for your USB flash disks easily either through the file copy dialog in Windows or through the third party tool Check Flash. This way you can find out how fast is the pen drive you have just bought.
You can download the Check Flash tool from http://www.mikelab.kiev.ua/index_en.php.