How to Fix Slow USB Transfer Speeds

Learn how to significantly improve USB 3.0 transfer speeds by changing a default Windows setting.

If you just bought a new USB 3.0 thumb drive (or hard drive) and noticed surprisingly slow read/write speeds, read on for the quick fix! A USB 3.0 drive should be getting write speeds of at least 15–20 MB per second, if not more. But Windows by default isn’t configured correctly to get those speeds.

Essentially there are two options for this setting, one enables caching and requires (or highly recommends) you select the “safely remove hardware” option in the taskbar before unplugging it, and the other which you can simply unplug at will. The latter is the default setting, and leads to severely crippled transfer speeds.

Before implementing this option, keep in mind that you will want to start using the eject option when removing your USB device. To do so, simply right click the USB device icon in the menu bar and select “Eject mass storage device.” This will prevent any potential issues with losing cached data. Ok, now that we covered that, let’s move on to the solution!

To fix this click the Windows icon (start menu), search for and open the Device Manager.