On Tue, 29 Dec 2015 20:28:00 -0800 Rick Thomas <rbtho...@pobox.com> wrote:
> On Dec 29, 2015, at 12:51 AM, Ross Boylan > <rossboy...@stanfordalumni.org> wrote: > > > The system is a bit sluggish; maybe ext4 on lvm wasn't the best > > choice for it. Ross > > Make sure the USB stick you’re using is rated for USB3, even if the > computer’s port is just USB2. > > The older USB2 sticks tend to be much slower at doing sustained > writes (both random and large sequential) The newer USB3 drives will > (usually) handle frequent writes better/quicker. It’s not the bus > speed that slows it down — it’s the internal architecture of the > FLASH memory. USB2, at 480Mbits/sec is 60Mbytes/sec, which is pretty > respectable for a disk drive, if the drive handle that load on a > sustained basis. The problem is that the USB2 FLASH doesn’t have > enough buffering to keep that rate up for very long. The > manufacturers have, for the most part, addressed that problem in USB3 > devices. > If you can invest a bit and can afford a much larger device, a USB hard drive will work quite well. I have the smallest one I've ever seen, a Samsung which is no longer made and has a mini-USB socket on the drive PCB itself. But it's old, and now dropping bits here and there, so I'm looking for a cheap USB-SSD at the moment, currently around 50GBP for 128GB/USB3 here. -- Joe
