A question about USB 3.1

[PCH (Paul)]

Hey guys,

can anyone offer a solution to my issue?

I regularly transfer several GBs of files to a thumb drive, and with my PC only having USB 2.0 USB ports, the transfer typically takes ages to complete the transfer.

Wanting to speed up the process I decided to buy a PCIe USB 3.1 card and a matching USB 3.1 thumb drive.

Theoretically this combination should have resulted in a transfer speed many times faster than the original USB 2.0 hardware aboard the PC motherboard.

And yet, the result was surprisingly unimpressive. It was faster, but only just.

The PCIe card installation was simple enough and the driver is verified as working correctly when I look in Device Manager.

I'm no guru but I know some of you are. Can anyone suggest anything I might not have thought of?

At the end of the day it's no huge deal and not a complete waste of money as I do have a 64Gb thumb drive that I didn't have before. But fast would have been good.

Any suggestions gratefully received

[glend (Glen)]

What sort of PC is it and which USB3 driver are you using? The drivers are not all the same. I, and many others, running ASI USB3 cameras have been through this issue recently.

[PCH (Paul)]

Originally Posted by glend

What sort of PC is it and which USB3 driver are you using? The drivers are not all the same. I, and many others, running ASI USB3 cameras have been through this issue recently.

Hi Glen,

The card is a Chinese Shintaro brand and the driver that comes with it is the ASMedia USB3.1eXtensible host controller. The thumb drive is a Kingston HyperX 3.1 64Gb.

The PC's Device Manager says th device is working properly.

The PC is generic and runs Windows 10

[PCH (Paul)]

Originally Posted by astro744

Your mainboard may only have a PCIe x1.0 slot which does not support the high transfer speeds of USB 3.1. This is likely the bottleneck limiting your speed and no change in driver will help. You've jumped two speed generations from 2.0 skipping 3.0 up to 3.1 which is twice as fast as 3.0.

I'll be looking at a 3.1 equiped PC when next I'm upgrading and hopefully some more peripheral devices will follow suit soon.

I'll grab the motherboard manual and see if I can find out that info, - thanks for the reply.

[PCH (Paul)]

Ok, I've checked.

The slot I've put it in is a PCI Express 3.0 x16 slot so everything should be sweet.

Looks like I have a bit more homework to do.