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fast USB (4-8gb) thumb drive wanted

POSTED BY: godsakes 3 months, 2 weeks ago

Hi all

i'm thinking about turning my laptop into a media centre - i'm considering installing a cut down OS (maybe tinyxp) on to a flash drive and booting up via USB to reduce loading times (as a sort of poor mans solid state hard drive)

can anyone recommend a deal for a very fast thumb drive - or would i be better off getting a CF card with reader?

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#2

04-08-2009, 18:16
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Fast Memory Stick = 12 MB/s.

Fast HDD = 100 MB/s

Fast SSD = 300 MB/s



Quieter with a lower power usage, yes, but it's not going to be faster.
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#3

04-08-2009, 19:21
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i believe the faster flash drives should be closer to 30MB per sec (read speed anyway) but i take your point - i've heard the faster access times on flash drives help boot up times.

i can certainly see why this might not be the case with opening a large program (or transfering large files), but presumably there's a case for smaller programs (& bare bones OS).

i would also point out if there was no speed advantage with flash drives - why would 'vista's ready boot' take advantage of flash drives for caching (when you're low on ram) over hard drive space??


Hence why vista has a
Last edited by godsakes : 04-08-2009 at 19:26.
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04-08-2009, 20:51
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Flash drives are slower, but while a conventional HDD has an 8-9MS seek time, flash drives have less than 1MS as there no movement required. This is rarely advantageous, but when your looking for fast caching this can be helpful. Not too good for running an OS from, though.
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