My desktop has both USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports, along with an SD Card Reader. Recently while transferring several Gigabytes of data, I noticed the SD Card was transferring around 8 MB/s (that’s “B” as in Bytes). First I was a bit shocked. Had I been transferring data from SD Cards at that speed for the past year? Why hadn’t I noticed it sooner? Perhaps I wasn’t transferring often or transferring such large files as I do today.
I searched online to see USB 2.0 speeds and saw that the MAX is 60 MB/s. Mine was nowhere near that. I decided to update the USB drivers and purchase a USB 3.0 SD Card Reader.
The card reader was delivered after a few days. And drum-roll… Now I’m getting speeds up to 90 MB/s on the external card reader! WOW!! So was I really copying at 8 MB/s for the past year? I guess! So remember to keep your drivers updated. Apparently Windows updates don’t catch all your devices.
Enjoy this screenshot of my current transfer speeds. Mind you, my SD Card is rated U1 and Class 10 with speeds up to 80 MB/s. I will gladly take 88 MB/s!
If you’re looking to update your device drivers, search for “device manager”. It should look something like this:
If you know which device you’d like to update the driver for, just right-click and select “update driver”.
Did you repeat the test with just the drivers updated for the USB 2.0 card reader?
Good question! I meant to include a screenshot… but yes, the speeds increased on the USB 2.0 ports after the update… but the USB 3.0 reader was much faster so I use that exclusively.-910-891