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Every time I send files (almost 1-2GB movies) to my parents' pendrives I'm about to fall asleep. It's not pendrives fault because the other Windows laptop transfers at a fair USB 2.0 speed...

I always send them through Nautilus: from 0 to 100 in seconds, then it gets stuck and remains for about 5-10 minutes, when it finally completes. It never occurs when I'm using 3.0 devices, speed is ok.

I really think that's Nautilus fault, maybe connected to my architecture, I don't know, but that's really frustrating. Is there something I can do?

EDIT: I just tried sending the same file through Nautilus and then with cp /source-path/source-file /dest-part/dest-file as suggested by @Bob91 and I found that it seems to take the same time to transfer 1.5GB (~4-5 minutes), so we can exclude Nautilus.

EDIT 2: @sudodus You turned on my light bulb, so I did a benchmark in both laptops (Windows vs Ubuntu): I tested my parents' Sony & Sandisk 2.0, my old Sony 3.0 and my WD external HDD and result in write speed surprised me: we have about 4-5MB/s for the 2.0 drives, a sad 7MB/s for my old Sony 3.0 and a good 68-70MB/s for my external HDD.

According to @vidarlo:

The reason it show a quick progress is memory caching. The file is only written at the end of the copy process, which tricks the UI into believing that copying is further along than it actually is.

Thanks everyone. I'm going to buy decent pendrives for my parents' birthday

Zanna
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np_3ka
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3 Answers3

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It's probably crappy USB drive. Cheap USB drives have a write speed of <15MB/s, some as low as 1-2MB/s. Want faster? Buy an more expensive one.

10 minutes for 2GB works out to approx. 3.3MB/s, which is reasonable for a cheap drive.

The reason it show a quick progress is memory caching. The file is only written at the end of the copy process, which tricks the UI into believing that copying is further along than it actually is.

(As a sidenote: I've even seen drives advertised as USB 3.0... and 5MB/s write speed!)

vidarlo
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try to copy files from the command line to know if nautilus faults

cp /source-path/source-file /dest-part/dest-file
Bob91
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I had this problem for years with all kind of usb sticks (no matter 2.0 or 3.0), formatted as fat32 (mostly), but sometimes also ntfs.

After trying to improve Mac access to my Linux sticks I have started using exFAT format, and now I see what I consider normal speed (like in Windows, without a lag at 99% etc).

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cipricus
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