Hello people,
have the following problem:
I got a cheap 1GB stick given. On this all portable applications run smoothly.
I did then because of lack of space a 4 GB stick purchased, was the fastest I can find.
On this, the applications (eg SeaMonkey) do not run as well. Loading takes longer, and the websites, e-mail takes a long time to open folders.
Sometimes the program hangs for a few seconds altogether.
Problem of the stick? Have these changed twice already ...
What could be more?
Helpful answers would be nice,
Best regards,
Moritz
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When you said 'I got a cheap 1GB stick', I am guessing you got a USB 2 drive as opposed to a USB 3 one
What's the difference?
This is from the PortableApps 'World's Best Flash Drive: The PortableApps.com Companion' http://worldsbestflashdrive.com/
'USB 3.0 SuperSpeed Interface with full USB 2.0 compatibility
USB 3.0: up to 85 MB/s read and 44 MB/s write*
USB 2.0: up to 37 MB/s read and 28 MB/s write*
5x better portable app performance on USB 2.0 than most retail drives'
However, you will also need a USB 3 compatible computer
Some apps such as Songbird, LibreOffice, and others are drive intensive, and you will only really notice a significant difference between USB 2 & 3 in these heavy usage apps; otherwise, I don't think there is anything particularly wrong with your USB drive.
It is likely the stick. It isn't an issue of USB2 vs USB3 as USB2 has plenty of bandwidth for these apps to work fine. It's an issue of cheap no-name USB sticks (and even some name brand ones) using inferior memory chips and controller chips. This means write speeds can wind up insanely slow so apps that write alot to the drive (like SeaMonkey, Firefox, etc) will have their interface freeze up as you use them. There can be a 50x performance difference between a cheap and a good USB2 drive.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
In at least a good general list, or suggested brands / types. (cheap no-name USB sticks (and even some name brand ones) using inferior memory chips and controller chips.) I use mostly PNY Attache on usb 1.1, and usb 2.0 sure a teeny bit slower than my hard drive but really not a lot, and not enough to care.
Tom's Hardware has charts for a number of thumb drives. I've put a direct link below, but it may change over time so probably best to navigate to the charts:
> Tom's Hardware / click Charts / select External Storage / click USB Thumb Drive Charts
Direct Link: http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/usb-thumb-drive-charts/benchmarks,109.html
It may be a bit hard to digest. There are too many different metrics that apply to storage, and vendors give so many of their drives similar names. I don't think there is any one metric that will tell you if a drive is good for running apps, but it at least gives a chance of finding out if a prospective drive has a flaw (like anemic sequential speeds, or poor performance on 4K random writes).
[If any one knows of a better database, something like Passmark (here) but for thumb drives, please let us know.]
You are discussing 2 different USB sticks.
The cheap 1GB stick runs well.
The "fastest you can find" 4GB stick runs slow.
Correct?
It would help if you could tell us the brand of the sticks and where you actually got them.
Also, even if your 4GB stick was a quality brand from a normal vendor, it could be defective.
I made this half-pony, half-monkey monster to please you.
In addidtion you could measure drive speed with CrystalDiskMark. While the benchmark results are not all that matters, they may give a hint for the drives response times - espacially for apps with many small files, the random read times for small files (4k) matter. If an app needs to write small file data, like thunderbird, even the random write times for small files (4k) come into account.
A general fast drive does not always mean, it "feels" fast. I have on old 256MB drive that peaks at a measly 7 MB/s but is up to two times faster with small files than many of my other drives. It does compete well with my faster drives as long as no large files are involved and feels faster than my bulk drives despite their 3 to 4 times faster top speed.