On Wednesday 19 February 2025 12:10:59 Greenwich Mean Time Frank Steinmetzger 
wrote:
> Am Tue, Feb 18, 2025 at 11:53:48AM +0000 schrieb Michael:

> > Once buffers are saturated write operations will settle at what the device
> > can achieve.  I have observed writes slow down when the empty space left
> > is getting low.
> 
> Which buffer? Sticks don’t generally have one, let a lone an equivalent to
> an SSD’s SLC cache. I guess you mean the host’s cache?

Yes.  I'm talking about dumb USB sticks with no onboard DRAM.  You can see 
initially a small duration upsurge in speed, before the data transfer settles 
to steady state.  After the command completes (cp , dd, etc.) and exits in the 
terminal, there is still data shown being transferred for some seconds until 
the buffer empties.

When carrying out successive tests you have to empty the buffers to obtain 
accurate results.