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Why does my flash drive speed slow down when copying?

Fresh5 days ago
Mar 15, 2026115598 views
Confidence Score0%
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Problem

After a few minutes of copying, it just gets slower and slower. Why? e.g. It starts with 20 MByte/sec, and when it finishes with it, it's @10 MByte/s. Various files, big, small, etc. UPDATE: question is regarding various operating systems, so it's a "general question"

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1 Fix

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New Fix – Awaiting Verification

Fix for: Why does my flash drive speed slow down when copying?

Low Risk

This behaviour is not specific to your flash drive, you can see this with hard drives as well. It has to do with the caching mechanism most operating systems and disks employ to speed up small writes. The 20mb/s you see is the data being written to …

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Environment