Flash drives/sticks

[pcslookout]

I hate them. They are far to slow. Maybe it was just the one my friend had but I can't stand the speed. Rather use a small portable hard drive then have to deal with that speed. Are they all like this ? The only other thing I hate is they are not always bootable at least not on every pc.

 

[Soundmanred]

Depends what you use them for.
In a related story, I hated them when I worked at Google. They made me wear a half dozen of them at once all the time. We decided to form a club of thumb drive wearers, then it became cool, so then I felt like a king adorned with gold chains around my neck. I had to buy a headrest, man was it crazy. You remember those days? Back when the phrases "portable apps" and "bootable this or that" were the cool words to use? I sure do.

 

[dac7nco]

With all of my USB 2.0 sticks, it'll copy @ ~25MB/sec max, and at the end it'll say 5 seconds remaining for like 2 more minutes... why is that? I've ordered a USB 3.0 stick from Newegg to try, and I'm worried it'll do the same thing.

Daimon

 

[Nothinman]

With all of my USB 2.0 sticks, it'll copy @ ~25MB/sec max, and at the end it'll say 5 seconds remaining for like 2 more minutes... why is that? I've ordered a USB 3.0 stick from Newegg to try, and I'm worried it'll do the same thing.

Daimon

Either the stick is lying about the data write speeds initially or Windows is being overzealous and caching most of the writes. The last part where it says 5s is where it's actually flushing all of the buffers and ensuring the data is written.

 

[Modelworks]

Windows caches usb drives so you sometimes see wrong readings.
Two things effect the speed, the controller on the usb stick and the memory chips used on the stick. Most memory chips can handle 20MB/sec without problems, but the controllers are low speed processors that usually run at around 8-16Mhz and can't keep up. Best solution I found for speed at about the same cost was to buy a card reader and use compact flash. Those can do about 40MB/sec easily.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820220460
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820162021

 

[alkemyst]

I couldn't survive day to day without my usb stick. All my PC tools are on it.

I don't need uber speed to use them.

If I wanted to cart around a porn server, then a 1TB portable drive would be the way to go.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Windows caches usb drives so you sometimes see wrong readings.
Two things effect the speed, the controller on the usb stick and the memory chips used on the stick. Most memory chips can handle 20MB/sec without problems, but the controllers are low speed processors that usually run at around 8-16Mhz and can't keep up. Best solution I found for speed at about the same cost was to buy a card reader and use compact flash. Those can do about 40MB/sec easily.

If that were true, then there would be no need to go to quad-channel flash to max out the USB2.0 interface (30MB/sec).
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/patriot_launches_quad-channel_xporter_rage_usb_flash_drive

It has been more of my experience that the problem is the speed of the flash memory, it really is that slow. Remember, this is the lower-quality flash like 3LC being used, and write times are much slower than the stuff used in SSDs. Even SSDs like Intel's X25-V only get 10MB/sec write speeds *per channel* of flash memory.

Edit: My bad, they only get 7MB/sec write speed per channel. See
http://www.storagereview.com/intel_x25v_ssd_review_40gb
35MB/sec sequential write speeds. With FIVE CHANNELS of flash memory.

If common (higher-end) flash chips could sustain 20MB/sec of writes like you claim, then shouldn't it be reflected in the performance specs? Why would Intel release a drive that can only do 35MB/sec, when they could release a drive that could do 100MB/sec? So what you claim doesn't make sense.

 

[hclarkjr]

I hate them. They are far to slow. Maybe it was just the one my friend had but I can't stand the speed. Rather use a small portable hard drive then have to deal with that speed. Are they all like this ? The only other thing I hate is they are not always bootable at least not on every pc.

try one of these, i have both 4 and 8gb models and love them. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820220252
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc..._-20220251-L0E

 

[pcslookout]

try one of these, i have both 4 and 8gb models and love them. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820220252
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc..._-20220251-L0E

lol thanks those are the ones I found like yesterday or the day before when researching. Good to know my research was rewarding after all!

My next problem is getting my main pc to boot from a usb stick. It seems like some pcs have problems with this.

 

[hclarkjr]

you have to set both boot priority and the boot lineup. not just one of them. that was mistake i made and could not figure it out

 

[trippy1976]

I actually came here to learn about this a little today.

I have a blue USB hard drive that plugs in externally. I have portableapps.com installed on it. It only uses a GB or two for what I need. One of the biggest uses is xampp with a dev site that has a moderately large mysql DB.

Since I didn't need so much space and even the small portable drive was tough to use on planes, I opted for a Lexar 8GB flash drive. Since I was using portable apps, I just xcopied to the new usb flash drive and was off to the races.


EXCEPT... it's so painfully slow. I'm using this for web dev, so I change something and then save. It's actually faster when I use WinSCP and save to a remote server! When I do anything that requires a database query the pages serve up painfully slow.

Copy it all back to my blue external HDD and WOW - it knocks my socks off in comparison.

Is there any usb flash drive out there that can mirror the performance of my external HDD?

 

[Yellowbeard]

If you can think of a better way to carry anywhere from 1GB to 128GB around in a tiny drive that needs no external power source, I'd like to hear about it. ;-)

 

[trippy1976]

My external drive is only 3x4 inches and requires no external power and is at least 10x faster than my current flash drive (observed, not measured). I am not a hardware guru, but the difference in speeds surprised me. I thought folks here might know a better option than what I'm using.

I appreciate the humor of your comment, but it doesn't help or answer my question:


"Is there any usb flash drive out there that can mirror the performance of my external HDD?"

 

[Yellowbeard]

My external drive is only 3x4 inches and requires no external power and is at least 10x faster than my current flash drive (observed, not measured). I am not a hardware guru, but the difference in speeds surprised me. I thought folks here might know a better option than what I'm using.

I appreciate the humor of your comment, but it doesn't help or answer my question:


"Is there any usb flash drive out there that can mirror the performance of my external HDD?"

What external drive do you have?

And, FWIW, our GT and GTR drives are pretty fast as flash drives go.

http://www.corsair.com/usb-drives/flash-voyager/flash-voyager-gt.html

 

[curlysir]

There is a significant difference in speed between USB flash drives on the market. I have quiet a collection and to get a fast drive you usually have to go with the high end flash drives. The el cheapo drives are not normally going to preform as fast as the higher end (more expensive) drives. My faster drives are twice as fast as the slow drives. The fastest 2.0 drive I own is the Kingston Hyper X but unfortunately the version I have is no longer made.

If your system supports USB 3.0 there are very fast drives starting to show up. Just be sure that you check the specs on the drive as speed will vary by size on some brands. The fastest drive I have of the smaller size is the Patriot Supersonic. I also have a Super Talent SuperCrypt USB 3.0 that is pretty much a SSD drive in a very small format.

The point of all this is that there are differences in USB drives and the faster ones normally are going to be more expensive. Most manufactures have a performance series of flash drives and have the specs posted so you can compare the drives.