ROG Strix Z690-F Gaming Wifi : USB mystery?

[BBruins]

Hello all. I'm not sure is this more windows problem or MBoard one. My USB behaves strangely. It works normally with USB-hard drives and with phones connected with USB. But if I'm trying to use any kind of memory stick, problems begin. If I'm using old memory sticks it start moving files to stick it starts fine then stops for about 20 seconds. Then it writes again for while and stops for 20 seconds. It will move files for stick evntually but it takes for long time. If I'm trying to use my fast usb-c Kingston DataTraveler Max (1000 MB/s) it doesn't work at all. It just keep calculating time and not even trying to move/copy. I'm using windows 10 Pro 22H2.
I really really appreciate if someone could help me with this.
Thank you

[JohnAb]

I had exactly the same symptoms, not with a USB stick, but with an external NVME drive connected via USB. I discovered that when I asked Windows to give me the used space, that figure did not match the individual folder sizes added together. It would slow down, pause, start transferring again etc. At first I thought the external NVME enclosure was faulty so I bought another one, no improvement. The strange things was that scanning the drive for errors (just using the Windows tool) reported no problems.

At the time, I also discovered that I was getting a lot of WHEA errors (visible in HWInfo, about three WHEA 17 errors every second) and after a fresh install of Windows and reformatting of the NVME drive and it has been fine since. No more WHEA errors, nice fast transfers.

So, it's odd that you have more than one USB stick behaving this way, but check for Windows WHEA errors - perhaps they are corrupting the drives. I never did find out why they were happening, but after I reinstalled Windows for the 2nd time, no more errors. I'm assuming that it was a corrupt Windows driver.

Regardless of WHEA errors, also try reformatting one of your USB sticks anyway and see if that fixes the problem. Hope this information helps...

I also have a question, I was looking at getting a DataTraveler Max. Would you recommend them? Are they as fast as claimed (when working)? Thanks.

[BBruins]

Hi, thanks for answering. I like DataTraveler Max. It's fast. Odd thing was that I bought 256GB but it was only 32GB. Outer casing was from 256 but insides were only 32GB. After changing it, I have no other problems with it and it is fast. Do you mean to look those WHEA errors using EventViewer. I did found HWInfo program but it wasn't part of windows. Anyway, I need to investigate this more.

Thanks,

[JohnAb]

Hi BBruins. Thanks for your comments on the DataTraveler Max. Useful to know. HWInfo is not part of Windows, but you can download it from here:

https://www.hwinfo.com/

It's a very popular piece of software and you don't even need to install it. It will just run from within a folder. That's an easy way to view WHEA errors, plus lots of other information about your voltages, motherboard, temperatures, fans, RAM, drives etc. You can even add graphs to your desktop to monitor all of those things if you want to and set it to autostart with Windows. It's very useful.

If you solve you USB stick problems, please let us know.