How do I find out USB Speed from a terminal?

Question

I am using Ubuntu 12.04 . I am here to know is there any way to observe Writing & Reading Speed of the USB through the terminal .

Answer 1

I was curious about this as I had a SATA 3 SSD I wanted to use for processing some video files (to keep i/o waits at a minimum) but I had only SATA 2 (3Gbps) ports available on the system, but also a USB3 port available.

You can determine the theoretical maximum speed of the port for each USB port with the command sudo lsusb -vvv |grep -i -B5 -A5 bcdUSB

The bcdUSB line returns the USB version of the port.

An example from one of my systems:

Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Device Descriptor:
  bLength                18
  bDescriptorType         1
  bcdUSB               2.00
  bDeviceClass            9 Hub
  bDeviceSubClass         0 Unused
  bDeviceProtocol         1 Single TT
  bMaxPacketSize0        64
  idVendor           0x8087 Intel Corp.
--
   Port 7: 0000.0100 power
   Port 8: 0000.0100 power
Device Qualifier (for other device speed):
  bLength                10
  bDescriptorType         6
  bcdUSB               2.00
  bDeviceClass            9 Hub
  bDeviceSubClass         0 Unused
  bDeviceProtocol         0 Full speed (or root) hub
  bMaxPacketSize0        64
  bNumConfigurations      1
--

Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Device Descriptor:
  bLength                18
  bDescriptorType         1
  bcdUSB               2.00
  bDeviceClass            9 Hub
  bDeviceSubClass         0 Unused
  bDeviceProtocol         0 Full speed (or root) hub
  bMaxPacketSize0        64
  idVendor           0x1d6b Linux Foundation
--

Bus 001 Device 003: ID 10d5:5a08 Uni Class Technology Co., Ltd 
Device Descriptor:
  bLength                18
  bDescriptorType         1
  bcdUSB               1.10
  bDeviceClass            0 (Defined at Interface level)
  bDeviceSubClass         0 
  bDeviceProtocol         0 
  bMaxPacketSize0         8
  idVendor           0x10d5 Uni Class Technology Co., Ltd
--

Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Device Descriptor:
  bLength                18
  bDescriptorType         1
  bcdUSB               2.00
  bDeviceClass            9 Hub
  bDeviceSubClass         0 Unused
  bDeviceProtocol         1 Single TT
  bMaxPacketSize0        64
  idVendor           0x8087 Intel Corp.
--
   Port 5: 0000.0100 power
   Port 6: 0000.0303 lowspeed power enable connect
Device Qualifier (for other device speed):
  bLength                10
  bDescriptorType         6
  bcdUSB               2.00
  bDeviceClass            9 Hub
  bDeviceSubClass         0 Unused
  bDeviceProtocol         0 Full speed (or root) hub
  bMaxPacketSize0        64
  bNumConfigurations      1
--

Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Device Descriptor:
  bLength                18
  bDescriptorType         1
  bcdUSB               2.00
  bDeviceClass            9 Hub
  bDeviceSubClass         0 Unused
  bDeviceProtocol         0 Full speed (or root) hub
  bMaxPacketSize0        64
  idVendor           0x1d6b Linux Foundation
--

Bus 004 Device 002: ID 174c:5106 ASMedia Technology Inc. Transcend StoreJet 25M3
Device Descriptor:
  bLength                18
  bDescriptorType         1
  bcdUSB               3.00
  bDeviceClass            0 (Defined at Interface level)
  bDeviceSubClass         0 
  bDeviceProtocol         0 
  bMaxPacketSize0         9
  idVendor           0x174c ASMedia Technology Inc.
--

Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Device Descriptor:
  bLength                18
  bDescriptorType         1
  bcdUSB               3.00
  bDeviceClass            9 Hub
  bDeviceSubClass         0 Unused
  bDeviceProtocol         3 
  bMaxPacketSize0         9
  idVendor           0x1d6b Linux Foundation
--

Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Device Descriptor:
  bLength                18
  bDescriptorType         1
  bcdUSB               2.00
  bDeviceClass            9 Hub
  bDeviceSubClass         0 Unused
  bDeviceProtocol         1 Single TT
  bMaxPacketSize0        64
  idVendor           0x1d6b Linux Foundation

Or the quick and easy alternative of lsusb -t which provides output like this:

/:  Bus 04.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=xhci_hcd/4p, 5000M
    |__ Port 4: Dev 2, If 0, Class=Mass Storage, Driver=usb-storage, 5000M
/:  Bus 03.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=xhci_hcd/4p, 480M
/:  Bus 02.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=ehci-pci/2p, 480M
    |__ Port 1: Dev 2, If 0, Class=Hub, Driver=hub/8p, 480M
/:  Bus 01.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=ehci-pci/2p, 480M
    |__ Port 1: Dev 2, If 0, Class=Hub, Driver=hub/6p, 480M
        |__ Port 6: Dev 3, If 0, Class=Human Interface Device, Driver=usbhid, 1.5M
        |__ Port 6: Dev 3, If 1, Class=Human Interface Device, Driver=usbhid, 1.5M

Since the 5 Gbps available via USB3 was far closer to the 6 Gbps that SATA 3 is rated at I decided to connect the drive there on Bus 004 Device 002(via Asmedia USB3toSATA adapter). The results were quite satisfying.

Sources: This page

Experimentation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA How to find USB hub speed

Answer 2

The pv tool allows you to view the throughput of the data flowing through it. After installing the package, you could run a command like the following to see the write rate:

$ cat /dev/zero | pv > /media/some_usb/tmp123

203.1MiB 0:00:02 [100.2MiB/s] [ <=>                   ]

For reading, perform the opposite operation using the newly-created tmp123 file:

$ cat /media/some_usb/tmp123 | pv > /dev/null

Answer 3

You can use rsync to give an approximation of your transfer speed, although it will vary depending on whether small or large files are being transferred and whether the destination is a slow flash drive or a fast external hard disk. For example:

rsync -avviu ~/Videos /media/Mik2

sent 874419803 bytes  received 149 bytes  4427442.79 bytes/sec
total size is 874312527  speedup is 1.00

(Also, if you open tail -f /var/log/kern.log and then connect your device you can see whether it is being set up for ehci (enhanced host controller interface), which supports USB 2 speeds. For example, the kernel log should state 'new high-speed USB device...using ehci_hcd'.)

Answer 4

This answer is a little bit off the exact question since I am using ubuntu 20.04, I haven't tested it on other versions, but I think this may also be helpful.

This way is much easier for me:

1. Run gnome-disks in terminal, open the GUI interface. (You can also just search it in application list.)

2. Click the disk you want to test -> Device Options -> Benchmark Disk -> Start Benchmark

This shows speed of the USB drive, not that of the USB port.

Answer 5

Try with this:

$ sudo lsusb -vvv

Then, have a look at the entries named bDeviceProtocol and bInterfaceProtocol

Answer 6

i was wondering the same thing recently too but the other answers were not too satisfying. so i later found out that using lsusb -t will show if the devices is attached to the USB 3 root hub or USB 2 root hub and the device's speed.

    $ lsusb -t
/:  Bus 04.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=xhci_hcd/2p, 10000M
    |__ Port 1: Dev 6, If 0, Class=Mass Storage, Driver=usb-storage, 5000M
/:  Bus 03.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=xhci_hcd/2p, 480M
    |__ Port 2: Dev 7, If 0, Class=Mass Storage, Driver=usb-storage, 480M
/:  Bus 02.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=xhci_hcd/8p, 5000M
/:  Bus 01.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=xhci_hcd/16p, 480M
    |__ Port 1: Dev 2, If 0, Class=Hub, Driver=hub/4p, 12M
        |__ Port 3: Dev 5, If 1, Class=Human Interface Device, Driver=usbhid, 12M

alternative, using dmesg, it will show when the device is enumerated as high speed or super speed

[274.010414] usb 4-2: new SuperSpeed USB device number 2 using xhci_hcd

[1478.495255] usb 3-2: new high-speed USB device number 4 using xhci_hcd