On Dec 29, 2015, at 12:51 AM, Ross Boylan <rossboy...@stanfordalumni.org> wrote:
> The system is a bit sluggish; maybe ext4 on lvm wasn't the best choice for it. > Ross Make sure the USB stick you’re using is rated for USB3, even if the computer’s port is just USB2. The older USB2 sticks tend to be much slower at doing sustained writes (both random and large sequential) The newer USB3 drives will (usually) handle frequent writes better/quicker. It’s not the bus speed that slows it down — it’s the internal architecture of the FLASH memory. USB2, at 480Mbits/sec is 60Mbytes/sec, which is pretty respectable for a disk drive, if the drive handle that load on a sustained basis. The problem is that the USB2 FLASH doesn’t have enough buffering to keep that rate up for very long. The manufacturers have, for the most part, addressed that problem in USB3 devices. Enjoy! Rick
