Jeff: Good article, as usu, but a couple of observations to go w/ the rest:
Formatting a UFD w/ NTFS (or ext3, xfs, etc) is generally regarded as bad practice. Why ? The aforementioned are all journaling filesystems and write more than just your data to the drive (for fault tolerance.) Virtually every time I’ve read about this, these file systems are reported to significantly shorten the life of a UFD. What’s your take on the subj ?
Get a UFD that has a retractable USB iface. While they’re plastic, my SanDisk Cruisers have held up pretty well (knock on wood !) after six months of daily residence in my pocket. And I carry them EVERY time I leave the house. With a retractable iface, that’s one less thing to lose (the iface cap) and pos shorten the life of the UFD.
Don’t have much to add on the subj of speed as I don’t expect much, given the nature of how UFDs are used. That is, we plan to plug these devices into many diff systems and has already been pointed out, not all USBs hubs are the same. Hell, it’s not uncommon to plug in via a USB 1 root hub, esp if you’re doing repairs and maintenance on other folks PCs.
But they’re absolutely amazing for carrying around a bootable, useable OS, like BartPE, Knoppix, or Slax !
Just wanted to agree and emphasize Thomas Winsnes comments regarding SAS. Current PATA or SATA desktop hard drives at 7500 or even 10000 RPM are not comparable to SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) drives or even older U320 and U160 SCSI drives at 10000 RPM and especially at 15000 RPM.
Seek times on a good SCSI drive are a fraction of PATA or SATA drives and the SCSI architecture allows for concurrent read/write operations and other optimizations to maximize throughput and ensure data integrity.
If you really want optimal performance on your desktop, get a good SAS controller and drive. You won’t believe the difference… seriously. Another benefit is that the SCSI drives are built to last as they’re intended for servers in a commercial environment. Sure they cost more than the consumer drives but you get what you pay for… and are far less than the current SSD drive prices.
I’ve been running my web server on an Adaptec 29160 controller and a Fujitsu 7200RPM SCSI drive for over 8 years without a single issue. The server is running Windows Server 2003 Standard on dual Athlon MP 1.2GHz processors and it’s still my fastest desktop system. Much more responsive than my Intel Core 2 Duo and Athlon X2 multi-core systems running on SATA 300 drives… even with 2-4 times the system memory and at much higher processor speeds.
But the article was still helpful as I’m looking for a fast USB thumbdrive to use for ReadyBoost in Vista. However, I’ll definitely be going with an SAS controller/drive(s) in my next system build.
For geek factor alone, I’m surprised nobody has mentioned the KingMax SuperStick. It’s so small that I carry it around in an empty Compact Flash holder (where it rattles around). It’s strong and works a treat and is guaranteed to fit in any USB slot (mostly because it’s smaller than the USB slot in the first place).
I bought the 1 Gig one a few years back for 14 quid. For capacity, it doesn’t matter; There’s enough space in 1G to store normal files, and I have an IPod for anything beefy like transporting photos around.
The SuperStick is a wonderful device. I see all these chunky rubbish usb sticks and laugh. Why would anyone want to carry those behemoths around?
Flash speeds are painfully slow. I wasn’t an early adopter, and I too expected better random access times. Flash maybe slow, but it should beat out spinning discs, even low power ones in ipods, etc. What gives?
It seems odd, Jeff, to say something like “think of how long it’ll take to fill at that speed!” and then say, in closing, “Now if I can just figure out what else to put on mine…”
Some people might be filling and emptying their entire flash drive very often (they really ought to buy a tiny 1.6 or 2.5" drive enclosure, seriously) - but I don’ think that’s most of us.
Most of us, in my experience, will simply use a 16G flash drive exactly like a 2G one… except it’ll take 8 times as long to get to the point of “what do I delete to make enough room for more stuff?”. (Or even longer, if we need “X Megs free to put an image on it for work”, since the X remains constant rather than proportional to the total.)
Bruce: Amazing how spending hundreds of dollars on a dedicated controller makes something faster than a random motherboard controller, isn’t it?
(Though your 8 year old drive is long past the end of its manufacturer’s claims of its duty cycle. Fujitsu, like everyone else I’ve ever looked at, says their product life for a drive is five years. I’d start thinking real hard about pre-emptive replacement if uptime matters.)
But event with fastest hdd (or ssd), VS2008 from time to time just stops responding. CPU is idle, hdd doing nothing, but VS has some kind of System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(5000) Even with all the patches.
I think they’re releasing new sw versions with eye-candy stuff without harvesting all raw cpu/hdd power, just adding new stuff to old code base. And there is all kinds of developers… bad ones too
That flash voyager isn’t very durable. It looks like it is because of that rubber casing, but the usb flange thing and connecter is just soldered onto a circuit board with no reinforcement besides the rubber housing. Rubber isn’t rigid at all, so basically there is no reinforcement. My flash voyager broke within a month… but I use it a lot installing software at work. The Super Talent Pico-C is by far the best drive I’ve ever owned. It’s simple compact design makes it really durable. I wouldn’t attach it to my keys, i don’t think it’s that durable. But it’s so small I could put it in my wallet, but I attach it to a clip on my work Id badge. Oh, and your blog is the best!
I have a dream, that by the end of next year, I will be able to buy bootable 128Gb USB 3.0 flash drives which give performance on a par with at least a laptop HDD. I can buy a single laptop with little or no onboard storage, and have multiple system installs: work environment; dev environment; gaming environment; CTPs and betas; probably some other things I haven’t even thought of. I’ll be able to hibernate one session, switch drives and resume another in a matter of seconds.
One thing you didn’t mention is the fact that USB Flash keys tend to die if you keep them in your pocket.
I am in the habit of keeping a USB key in my pocket at all times. They are sooo convenient. However, I never store anything of value on them without a backup because the USB keys only last about 6 months before failure. THAT is the reason that I only use the cheapest ones that I can find–preferably free.
Sometimes it is the case that falls apart and other times it is the memory itself that fails. I would hate to spend good money on a 16GB memory key that will be worth $0 before you know it.
Why is it that whenever a blogger make a post about comparing different products, some snarky asshole always comments and asks how much said blogger is getting paid for it?
I mean, you’re not allowed to have positive opinions about products you have used unless the manufacturer has given you money to do so, right?
After losing my one and only USB flash drive (which I used all of 2 or 3 times), I picked up a 16 GB SD card for my camera packaged with a USB card reader. No, it’s not as convenient as a flash drive, it requires carrying around two things instead of just one, but for people who don’t use flash drives very often but do want to have the ability to carry large amounts of data on something small (for those trips to Kinkos to have a 50 page document filled with uncompressed pictures printed), it works quite well. Of course, its nice to have capacity for 5000 pictures for those long laptop-free vacations.
The Voyager GT is definitely faster than the standard Voyager. I have 2 x 8GB GT’s for running virtual machines, and they do a nice job. I also have a 120GB Western Digital Passport portable drive (5400rpm) and I would say that the 2 compared to each other offer about the same performance when running VMware.
I remember the first time i noticed this. I had upgraded from 256mb flash drive to a 2gb drive. I did a lot of development right off that drive at school and at home. I noticed it took really long to merge my project directory even though it was USB 2.0. it turned out that the chip itself was significantly slower than my old chip. it was disappointing because i actually really liked that flash drive other wise. it ended up breaking a couple of years later, screwing me over on a couple of things i was storing there.
Even with all the patches.