How to Make a Slow USB Flash Drive Faster

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Posted on July 17, 2008 11:13 PM in Computers

Because I've currently got Lando hooked up to my home network via a wireless USB dongle, it can be very time-consuming to transfer files larger than a gigabyte over from my main computer. To work around the problem, I ordered an 8GB Kingston DataTraveler 100 USB flash drive from Newegg.com.

The drive arrived in the mail today, so when I got home I started copying a 2GB file over. I immediately noticed that when it came to copying files over, the thing was slow as goats. I had read something to that effect when reading some of the reviews on Newegg.com, but over 20 minutes to copy over 2GB of data? Really?

Since I also remembered reading about the drive's default FAT32 file system, I started looking up how to convert the drive to NTFS, which just so happens to be the same file system in use on my main computer and Lando, since they are running Windows XP and Vista, respectively. What I found was a semi-legible video about how to convert a flash drive from FAT32 to NTFS. Rather than making you learn a new hybrid of English in order to figure it out, here are the steps I followed to accomplish the task:

  1. Delete all files from the drive.
  2. Go to My Computer and right-click on the flash drive, choosing Properties from the context menu.
  3. In the window that appears, click on the Hardware tab.
  4. Find the flash drive in the list of devices, click on it once and then hit the Properties button.
  5. In the new dialog, click on the Policies tab.
  6. Select the "Optimize for performance" option if it isn't selected already and hit OK.
  7. Hit OK again to get out of the original Properties dialog.
  8. Go to My Computer and right-click on the flash drive again, this time choosing the Format option from the context menu.
  9. In the subsequent dialog, choose the NTFS file system from the dropdown.
  10. Select the Quick Format option.
  11. Hit OK and wait as your flash drive is formatted with the new file system.
  12. When the final dialog appears, letting you know that the drive has been formatted, you're good to go.

After following the steps above, it was readily apparent when trying to transfer files to and from the drive that it was much faster. Note that the steps above are written from the perspective of a Windows XP machine, but they likely aren't too different on a Vista machine. Either way, I've noticed the speed increase on both machines, so I'm much happier with my new USB flash drive now.

Comments

Claudio Carrazana on July 24, 2008 at 9:10 PM:

Sorry, but is not faster when you convert your Flash Drive to NTFS, I thought the same but using TERACOPY i could check speed and it was 1MB/s slower, There is a problem i still cant understand, I copied a 700 MB .avi movie to my Flash Voyager 2 GB, just after i formated my PC it lasted around 40 seconds to do it, this is around 18 MB/s transfer, some weeks later, after i used my PC and its USB ports i did it again, and now it last 1:40 seconds to copy the same file to the same Flash Drive, now it is working at 7 MB/s, i dont know whats the problem, i have been investigating all this week, im using Windows XP Professional, i readed about Windows 2000 doesnt have this problem, and readed too about VISTA has a worse problem with USB transfers, but my External 750GB USB HDD doesnt have problems at all, it is working around 35 MB/s (280 Mbits/s) so it is ok, i think this is a USB drivers problem, i cant understand, i swear my Flash Voyager 2GB was working at 18MB/s and now just 5 MB/s. I have another PC in my apartment in other state, it was working 18MB/s too, i will travel this week and i will test it again to see if it continue copying at 18MB/s.
Thanks for the Info
Claudio

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chris on August 12, 2008 at 5:33 PM:

Yeah, this doesn't help with the speed issue at all. Thanks though.

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Bernie Zimmermann on August 12, 2008 at 7:37 PM:

Sorry to hear it didn't help you out, Chris.

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Zahir on October 18, 2008 at 6:40 PM:

On the contrary, I read many times and this was based on tests that Fat32 is the fastest file system for flash drives.

NTFS is the slowest.

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Peter Smithson on November 28, 2008 at 3:57 AM:

There's a guy who's done various speed tests. He finds NTFS to be faster too -

http://www.msfn.org/board/FAT16-FAT32-NTFS-speed-t125116.html

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fadi shaya on January 26, 2009 at 4:18 AM:

Dear

still the same I just waste my time to check anyways

thanks

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Elusion on February 21, 2009 at 2:43 PM:

all i have to say is. NTFS doesn't improve shit! especially on a Jump drive. At first I thought it was me, but then I realized NTFS permissions / security would take forever on a 16GB jump drive. formatted back to FAT32 and OMG is this thing lightning fast! moral of the story dont fiddle with ntfs on your usb jump drive, especially 16GB. or else a 300meg file will take 55 minutes, VS seconds. I am very shocked FAT32 is faster but who cares I now know better not to mess with ntfs on jump drives. if NTFS was faster dont you think companies would ship usb thumb drives as ntfs.??? haha

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katzmandu on March 05, 2009 at 10:23 AM:

I think there are other tunables, too, other than just which filesystem format is used. I know when tuning large storage arrays for databases, we care about things like RAID stripe size and filesystem block size (or allocation size as it is referred to in DOS.) I changed my slow 16GB drive to FAT32 and it was faster. Also changed the allocation unit to 32bytes which is very high, but helps with the speed on transfers of LARGE files. I need to reformat and go back to 8k or something, though. The default for NTFS and FAT32 is 512 bytes.

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Patrick on March 16, 2009 at 5:56 PM:

Right click the flash drive click format then choose the settings that best fit your needs

Patrick out!!!

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Q on April 06, 2009 at 1:21 AM:

thx

This solved my problem (on vista)

1Mbyte/s ---> 30 - 50 Mbyte/sec

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Rusman on April 20, 2009 at 3:47 AM:

Some windows OS'es will, by default, set the USB device to be optimized for quick removal. This slows the transfers WAY down.

Right Click My Computer and select Manage
Under the Storage heading, select Disk Management (Note, your USB Device has to be plugged in)
Right click on the USB Device (should show up as Disk # - Removeable - ####MB - Online) and select Properties
On Properties screen select the USB Flash Drive and select Properties
On Policies Tab, change it to Optimize for Performance

Found via this site: http://thebackroomtech.com/2008/09/29/howto-fix-slow-usb-20-file-transfer-on-windows-xp/

Before this change, a 900MB file took over 4 minutes. After this change, it took about 30 seconds!!!!

I have a feeling that the blogger's system changed this setting when the format to NTFS was done.

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Rusman on April 20, 2009 at 3:51 AM:

Note to the above, one one of my systems, when I made this change, the device disappeared from the Disk Management list. After rescanning the disks, it came back.

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