ARCANITE 1TB USB 3.1 Flash Drive, USB Memory Stick, optimal read speeds up to 400 MB/s

This is an excellent USB flash drive, fastest by far that I have come across.Write speeds sustained 125 MB/secRead speeds sustained 325 MB/s.This is using a modern PC with USB 3.1 with NVMe hard drive ( Intel NUC 8i3BEH).Using my 4 year old HP laptop which with USB 3.0 gives the same write speeds but for some reason the reads slow after 8 GB of transfer - not sure why this is it may be to do with my laptop .On my Mac Mini which is USB2 where it is hampered by the slow USB interface to 26 MB/sec writes & 37 MB/sec readsSo optimal performance depends upon your hardware.Screenshots attached

I bought this on 25th March for £39.44. on 29th March the price has jumped up to £47.44. Aside from the completely arbitrary pricing, this is an excellent USB stick. Free space is only 230GB out of the 256GB advertised, and the write speed can be variable, however the size for the price is fantastic. Plus, I accidentally managed to put it in a 40-degree wash for 2 hours and 40 minutes, complete with detergent and fabric softener. I only realised after finding it stuck in the rubber trim next to the drainage holes at the end of the wash! I took the lid off, tipped out all the water and left it on a radiator overnight. 12 hours later, good as new. Works flawlessly and scans with no errors! Very pleased indeed.

Blimey!This is one seriously impressive gadget. I’ve had a lot of trouble with USB 3 sticks recently; this seems to have nailed it.Background. I’ve 2 PNY 256GB sticks, now 3 years old, (one for music, one for films) plugged into the stereo and TV respectively, and got around 20-50 MB/s write speed copying multiple files over. They work perfectly/reliable.When I needed a couple of new sticks for general use, for high capacity, PNY seemed the obvious choice for 256GB, and any other ‘known’ brands would do for 128GB and smaller.For reference, USB 2.0 low capacity sticks I had knocking around achieved about 3-4, or 4-7 MB/s, and a Kingston 3.0 ‘Datatraveller G4, 8GB’ managed 7-10 (all tests using the same data, a 2GB sample of hefty music files).A Sandisk Ultra 3.0, 32GB, managed about 25-30, so OK. But a new PNY 256GB (that looked the same as the ones I already had) took ages to get started, then crawled along at minimal speeds (talking sub-USB 2 average here). So PNY have definitely changed something.A Kingston 128GB ‘Datatraveller 100’ just kept stopping and starting – when it went, the speed was a decent ca.50, but your average would never hit that. Other users (of various 3.0 drives) have reported this stopping/starting behaviour, and it’s apparently something due to ‘caches’. So why then do the old PNYs work, and the new 32GB Sandisk?Reformatting exFAT, FAT32, NTFS made no difference. Same behaviour both my PCs (Win 10, Win 7). Changed settings on Win 10 for optimal performance…nothing.Then I got a 128GB Arcanite. Preformatted as FAT32 (supposedly the worst), I got a write speed of 100-120. And my PC is ancient.Hence, the PNY and Kingston are going back. And I might get some more of these Arcanites, maybe try the larger capacity models.I’ve never had a failure with USB sticks (and I’ve got some over 15yrs old) which I put down to the lack of moving parts. So I’ve no reason to doubt the Arcanite there, either.EDIT: For larger volumers of data, say a write of 8Gb plus, I found it slowed down a bit, but it's still faster than the competition.

I purchased this 3.1 128GB flash drive to expand the memory of my NVIDIA Shield TV. As soon as I plugged into the Shield a notice flashed up on screen saying that the Flash Drives was too slow. WHAT! it said write speeds up to 400mb/s.Tested the speed on a pc myself using a utility and was disapointed for the write speed to be only 350mb/s. I apprecite the the packaging said write speeds was upto 400mb/s but I feel that a full 12.5% below that speed is not close enough.

I was very tempted by cheaper 128GB USB Drives around the £17 mark but glad I went for the Arcanite 128GB. I tested the speed and sure enough it does read at 400MB/s and write speed of a sustained 60MB/s+ on my Mac.Copied over 112GB of data effortlessly and was done in just over 10 minutes. Didn't get hot at all.Well worth paying a bit more for a quality product.

So this drive is very good and robust and works with the bigger USB 3.0 standard and the smaller USB-C standard for a modern smartphone.Just one warning - it's very slow at writing. I have a folder of 812 MiB in size and used FastCopy on Windows 10 to copy from my internal SSD to this drive and here are the results:TotalRead = 812 MiBTotalWrite = 812 MiBTotalFiles = 1,173 (38)TotalTime = 05:10TransRate = 2.62 MiB/sFileRate = 3.78 files/sThe same copy was done on a Samsung Bar 128 GB drive:TotalFiles = 1,173 (38)TotalTime = 02:21TransRate = 5.74 MiB/sFileRate = 8.28 files/sAgain on a SANDISK - 64 GB USB Flash Drive | High-Speed USB Flash Drive | Ideal for Laptops, Game Consoles, In-Car Audio & More | Compact & Small | Memory Stick | Thumb Drive | Slim Design drive:TotalFiles = 1,173 (38)TotalTime = 01:01TransRate = 13.2 MiB/sFileRate = 19.0 files/sSo if you're happy to wait 5 mins for a file copy, it's great, but if you're in a rush to back up before you switch your laptop off, stay away.