Slow transfers to flash drives

Finding slow transfer rates to existing 4 gb Sandisk Cruzer drives, about 4min for 1gb. Bought some new HP ones just in case the issue was the drives and same thing. Transfer rates to my regular external drives are fine at about 1 min for 1 gb. Mentioned it to a friend and he lent me a memorex 2 gb travel drive and it was fine at about 1 min for 1 gb. Tried formatting for Mac OS and did not change the speed. The only difference I can tell is that my drives are FAT32 and his is FAT16. What gives?

Reviews for Sandisk Cruzer drives indicate that many people are complaining about slow speeds. That you've hooked other drives up to your Mac and they work fine further indicates that this is a problem with the Cruzer and not your system.

I recommend you take it back to the store and get something else with better reviews.

Sandisk Cruzer flash drives are what we issue at work. They are junk. Write speeds are absolutely horrible. Read speeds seem OK (not great). It's really bad when you have to copy an entire OS image that can take over an hour. I usually start any large file copies before lunch and they finish up shortly after I get back.

I don't have any experience with the HP flash drives, but just know that not all flash drives are created equal. Check the specs before you buy. Some manufacturers advertise the relatively fast read speeds (very easy for flash memory) but conveniently leave out the abysmally slow write speeds (flash memory gets more expensive to manufacture for higher write speeds).