question about usb flash drives

[mrgreeneyes]

my MacBook Air only have usb c ports, and I bought a usb-c flash drive 64gb in size and just trying to copy 20gb of comic books takes hours to copy, is that normal? should it be faster?

I have the drive formatted as Mac OS extended. what should it be formatted as for it to be compatible with my iPad.
it will only be used on my MacBook and iPad.

 

[0128672]

my MacBook Air only have usb c ports, and I bought a usb-c flash drive 64gb in size and just trying to copy 20gb of comic books takes hours to copy, is that normal? should it be faster?

I have the drive formatted as Mac OS extended. what should it be formatted as for it to be compatible with my iPad.
it will only be used on my MacBook and iPad.

Apple suggests formatting USB drives in the quote below, so you might want to try APFS. I don't know if that will help with the speed though.

"A USB drive must have only a single data partition, and it must be formatted as FAT, FAT32, exFAT (FAT64), or APFS. To change the formatting of a USB drive, use a Mac or PC."

Connect external storage devices to iPad

On iPad, use files stored on USB storage devices and SD cards.

support.apple.com

 

[mrgreeneyes]

Apple suggests formatting USB drives in the quote below, so you might want to try APFS. I don't know if that will help with the speed though.

"A USB drive must have only a single data partition, and it must be formatted as FAT, FAT32, exFAT (FAT64), or APFS. To change the formatting of a USB drive, use a Mac or PC."

Connect external storage devices to iPad

On iPad, use files stored on USB storage devices and SD cards.

support.apple.com

ok thanks I will format my drive to APFS. and see if t hat helps.

 

[mrgreeneyes]

I get this error message when I try to format the drive in APFS in disk utility.

 

[Dude2Dude]

That's a similar message I got when trying to mount my USB-C external Time Machie drive, which no longer works under MOnterey. This has hapened to a lot of people: a USB-C drive that worked fine in Big Sur no longer is seen in the Fonder or in Disk Utility in Monterey, even though it remains fully functional with Big Sur OS loaded computers. Call Apple and complain. The more people who raise the issue, the more likely it'll be addressed in the next update.

 

[wilberforce]

I get this error message when I try to format the drive in APFS in disk utility.

mds_stores is spotlight indexing. Force quit it in activity monitor and try again. Don't worry, it will restart.

 

[macphoto861]

One thing to keep in mind is that most flash drives are vastly over-optimistic in terms of real-world write speeds. They’ll have some huge write speed number on the packaging, and you’ll actually get pretty close to that speed… for a few seconds at least. The drive will quickly heat up, and thermal throttling kicks in, dramatically slowing it down.

That being said, hours for 20gb of files sounds way too slow. Did you double check in System Report that it is indeed connecting as a USB3 device and not USB2?

 

[Fishrrman]

On a USB flash drive, APFS v. HFS+ shouldn't make any difference.

But be aware that there seem to be some issues with Monterey's version of disk utility not being able to format some drives. There's more than one thread about such issues here at macrumors...

 

[zarathu]

On a USB flash drive, APFS v. HFS+ shouldn't make any difference.

But be aware that there seem to be some issues with Monterey's version of disk utility not being able to format some drives. There's more than one thread about such issues here at macrumors...

Must be on 12.01, or on non 2021 Macs, or with only SSD’s since I have no problem with using the WD HDD’s, both for access of data and for formatting in Time Machine.

 

[xgman]

You also might want to exclude the drive from Spotlight and Time Machine in each of those settings.