USB Flash Drive Life Varies Up To 10 Times 192
Lucas123 writes "Differences in the type of memory and I/O controllers used in USB drives can make one device perform two or three times faster and last 10 times longer than another, even if both sport the USB 2.0 logo, according to a Computerworld story. While a slow USB drive may be fine for moving a few dozen megabytes of files around, when you get into larger data transfers, that's when bandwidth contrictions become noticeable. In 2009, controller manufacturers are expected to begin shipping drives with dual- and even four-channel controllers, which will increase speeds even for slower drives."
FS (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What does speed have to do with life? (Score:3, Insightful)
MARKETING! (Score:5, Insightful)
I want to know SOMETHING like 133x is defined for CompactFlash to give a basic idea of the speed of the device. I'm willing to accept some fudging around but not prepared to find out my new 32-gig flash-drive is 10 times SLOWER than my old 2-gig one. How has this situation persisted this long in a performance-obsessed technical field?
Re:FS (Score:2, Insightful)
One would have thought that the editors of a technology website would know that a USB drive is not necessarily flash - oops, sorry this is Slashdot.
Re:Dual Channel is already available (Score:5, Insightful)
That's one theory. There may be other reasons.
In terms of how these results compare to other products, I think they are "pretty good". Not the best, but significantly better than average.
Proposed rule for Slashdot submissions: (Score:5, Insightful)
Flimsy construction (Score:5, Insightful)
My next drive was a Patriot 2 GB flash drive. It lasted maybe 50 insertions before the usb connector "pushed in" and became so loose that it could no longer be inserted properly into a USB port. I ended up snapping the outer housing off and now it's just a little tiny PCB with chips on it and a USB connector at the end. Works fine but I wouldn't take it anywhere remotely hostile. I keep it next to my computer.
So what is the point of this long story? That flash drives tend to have really cheap construction (in my experience) that doesn't hold up to much use, let alone much abuse. In the case of the Patriot I'm not surprised because it was a really cheap unit. But the Iomega was not.
I don't doubt that th expensive ruggedized flash drives can take much, much more abuse. But they represent like 1% of the market. Most drives are these really flimsily constructed things that fall apart when you look at them the wrong way.
In my experience(anecdotal of course) physical (Score:4, Insightful)
Linux runs pretty well on my cheap flash drive (Score:5, Insightful)
One annoying thing I have noticed is that programs will periodically completely freeze up and I'll look over and notice that the activity light on the drive is flashing. A common experience is that Firefox will be completely unresponsive, not even redrawing itself when a window that was obscuring it is moved, until the drive stops flashing, and then Firefox will instantly come back to life.
My theory is that the kernel is caching writes to the drive and then at some random point decides it's time to flush the write cache to disk. I think that any program that tries to write any files while the kernel is flushing the cache gets put into a wait state by the kernel until the cache flush is complete and then whatever write the program was attempting, gets written into the cache, ready to be flushed again on the next cache flush.
Furthermore, I theorize that for normal hard disk drives, the write speed is sufficient to keep "ahead" of cache flushes so that the cache never really "fills up" and no programs ever get waited in this way.
But that for slowish flash drives like mine, the kernel doesn't compensate for the slow write speed of the flash (because the kernel doesn't even realize that it's writing to flash?) and so it lets enough data buffer up that it has to frantically try to flush it all when the cache has filled up. Or perhaps, that the kernel just tries to flush too much at once, not realizing how slow the flush is going to be due to the underlying speed of the device.
I also theorize that this problem could be solved by having the kernel flush the cache more aggressively, and in smaller increments. If the flash drive were kept continually busy flushing small chunks of write cache, then a) the write cache would not be as likely to fill up, and b) no individual write would monopolize the device for such a long period of time becase the writes are all smaller.
Writing all of this makes me realize that the root cause may be that programs are trying to *read* from the device while a write cache flush is happening, and since the device can only do one operation (read or write) at a time, the long duration of the cache flush operation is blocking a program from reading the drive. Furthermore, if what the program is trying to read is a demand-paged part of its text segment, then it makes perfect sense that the whole process would be blocked by the kernel while the text segment piece waits to be loaded.
Am I even close to the mark on this one?
If so, I am sure there are Linux kernel experts who can tell me what values to write into what
Re:Flimsy construction (Score:3, Insightful)
Now I use a 2gb Kingston DataTraveler. It's very solidly built. I use it all the time and carry it with me always. I think it was about $20 last year. They're probably giving them away with a Happy Meal these days. I'm just waiting for the day I lose the little cap.
You can certainly buy very well-built models designed for travel. If you have to carry important data around with you I think the good ones are worth the extra dough.
Re:Dual Channel is already available (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I thought everyone knew this (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, you get what you pay for. But the problem here is that these drives don't indicate on the packaging whether they use SLC or MLC memory, or whether they offer more than one channel.
So let's say the crappy variety of 4 GB USB drives currently go for $25, and the better, faster variety will never sell at that price. Right now, you have no way of knowing whether that 4 GB drive going for $50 is made with the faster, more durable SLC memory, or whether the drive is simply overpriced.
You can therefore spend $50 for a drive and not get what you paid for. And the only way to safeguard yourself is to waste time researching your drive -- something you shouldn't have to do, since this info ought to be published as part of the drive's specifications.
Re:Dual Channel is already available (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows from a flash drive (Score:2, Insightful)
It can't be an objection to its freeness (as in beer) or you wouldn't use linux.
It can't be an objection to its restrictiveness, or you wouldn't be using (or attempting to use) Windows.
And it can't be that the shareware license prevents that specific use of the software, because doesn't the Windows EULA stipulate against running Windows from virtual machines, mobile devices or while enjoying ice cream? Ok, just kidding about the virtual machine, I believe that restriction came about with Vista.
db
Re:MARKETING! (Score:3, Insightful)
USB thumb drives are like floppy disks, I think no one really cares that much about reliability since most transfers are done via network or CD/DVD/etc, or external storage (portable hard drive).
Re:Windows from a flash drive (Score:3, Insightful)
I feel like shareware is mostly produced by people who want to make money off of software but aren't good enough to make their product professional, or in love with their project enough to do it for free.
I know that there are counterexamples to this, but the experiences I have had with shareware in the past have time and again reinforced my opinions in this area.
I much prefer free software over commercial software, and really appreciate people who write software for free and have 'donate' links on their web site. When I find software like this I know that I can both use the software and not pay money if I think it's not worth it, even if I use the software extensively for lack of a better option, but also have the option to donate money if I think the software is particularly good and I am especially appreciative of it (which I have done on numerous occasions).
If I had known that my attempts to use free software to duplicate the steps required to install Windows XP on my flash drive would have been such a miserable and time consuming failure (not due to the shortcomings of the free software involved, but simply because it was not intended for the purposes that I was using it for), I definitely would have just ponied up the cash for the shareware up front. But by the end of a completely wasted day, I didn't even want to do that anymore because I had already sunk more time into the problem than the solution was worth to me.
Re:Thumb Drive with flexible neck (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Dual Channel is already available (Score:1, Insightful)
with that in mind, i've had to transfer multiple profiles as part of an install for a customer, most were 2+ gigabites. I also just purchased that same exact flash drive. When transfering their
Re:Flash MP3 player (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you have objective numbers to back up that claim, like perhaps some RMAA tests? Or are you acting no better than the subjectivist audiophools who spend thousands on power cables?
Re:Dual Channel is already available (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Flash MP3 player (Score:3, Insightful)