If I'm not mistaken setting the drive to best performance just turns on write caching. I believe this was on by default in XP and then the default was changed to off in Vista or Win 7 due to folks losing data by just yanking the stick out when the illusion of the process being complete was so proudly announced by the Windows deception manager. Although with that jab having been tossed, I must give Microsoft credit for realizing they'd never get folks to do something as complicated as a couple clicks when it comes to ejecting a removable drive.
As far as the new system being faster? Well, spec's are nothing more than theoretical optimal performance ratings. The bottom line on performance boils down to the weakest link in the system. It's why price has for the most part been directly correlated with performance on systems of the same spec's. I remember years ago when I used to be an avid reader of computer magazine. Every year they would compare the new systems performance head to head. And it was amazing how two computers with the same exact spec's could produce startlingly different results on benchmark testing systems. I think it's why IBM sold off their PC business. At least back then the IBM systems would always be almost twice as fast as the closest contender with the same spec's. But no one was willing to pay for performance. And IBM wasn't willing to build systems with misleading spec's.
Tom On 11/17/2011 10:01 PM, Indigo wrote:
Here's an interesting little experiment, could be free if you have a spare thumb drive, shouldn't hurt it anyway, always reversable: Go to my computer, right click on your flash drive, press properties, hardware.. Select your flash drive from the list Hit Properties Click the policies tab Press optimize for performance Hit O.k. Format your drive to NTFS. (FAT and FAT32 are both very slow. Before unplugging it, its recommended that you hit Eject in my computer; however I have not lost data from it by not doing so. You will now have an insanely fast flash drive. unquote. I'm going to try this one. Also I'm going to the USB ports on the newer computer, to try to understand why I get way faster USB transfer speeds than on this machine, when both have USB version 2 ports. Do all USB ports have write cache enabled? That is said to speed up sata hard drives, but can result in total data loss if there's any loss of power while writing, but I'm not sure if write cache enabled can be applied to USB flash drives, or maybe it already is applied.. On 11/17/2011 8:56 PM, Chris Belle wrote:You've got to think of the whole chain, and unless you reall spend lots of money, most flash memory is made from mlc instead of slc. Single layer cells use more cells and don't try to stack multiple writes to fewer cells as mlc does, so that's why they write so slow and read somewhat faster. But no matter what you do, the usb bus gets lower priority than your ram does, and it might be ok for caching, but will never be as good as real ram. so what you'd spend on a top flight flash drive or slc to use as ready boost, you could afford more ram, but 2 gigs is pretty buff for xp, and it's probably not worth it. It'll be like increasing your paging file size or virtual memory but since it's on faster flash memory, it might be a bit faster, but nothing that great. But it's your money, go ahead and experiment and see. At 06:13 PM 11/17/2011, you wrote:When I read the specs for USB 2, it supports transfers up to 400 megs per second, if I read correctly, and yet the transfer rates to and from the thumb drives around here are pitiful. The thumb drives I have are by Hitachi, a good maker, I guess, so should do okay, and yet I get only about 11 to 15 megs second on my new computer, which has USB 2 ports, not USB 3, and only 2 or 3 megs second on this other Windows 7 64 bit computer, also with USB 2 ports. I can't comprehend why there is so much difference in reading and writing to the same USB drives on the two computers. I read an article saying you can soup up any thumb drive by reforematting it to NTFS instead of FAT32, plus right clicking on the drive and selecting Optimize For Best Performance. Even so, I read posts in that forum claiming only 30 or 50 megs second at best. Some posts said it makes no difference, 30 or 50 megs second is a false report, caused by reformatting to NTFS, that transfer to and from the drive actually continues after the final report is displayed, and you'll lose your data if you quit too soon. Some forum posts said NTFS is no faster, even slower than FAT 32. Okay, maybe that trick works and maybe not, but where can I buy a very fast thumb drive, as fast as the medium will go, and what do I look for in designation, flash medium class, whatever? It doesn't need to be a huge drive, no larger than 4 gigs or so, and I'm definitely not looking for a SSD drive, just a thumb drive. I read about SD flash drives, for video cameras and such, that are fast enough to record video live at high frame rates. That's the speed I want in a USB thumb drive. Any ideas, anyone? Thanks for any tips, Indigo LFor all your audio production needs and technology training, visit us at www.affordablestudioservices.com or contact Chris Belle cb1963@xxxxxxxxxxxxx or Stephie Belle stephieb1961@xxxxxxxxxxxxx for customized web design
