[mdlug] USB Flash Drive Recommendations for Linux?

[Dan Pritts]

On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 10:43:10PM -0500, Stan Green wrote:
> size and portability of the flash drive. Does anyone have a brand/model that 
> is fast, has large capacity, 32GB +,  and works well with Linux? 

The bottom line with flash drives (including camera cards)
is that you have to buy based on stated read and write speed.

For comparison, realize that a newish hard drive will max out at a 
80-100MB/sec transfer rate (over SATA; USB2 is theoretically limited to
480Mb/sec which is 60MB/sec; in practice it's slower).

cheap USB drives are slow slow slow as you've found.

If it doesn't state its speed, keep moving, there's nothing to see
here.

Here are a few mfr. links:

http://www.sandisk.com/products/productdisplay.aspx?catid=1004
   - then click on "high performance" on the left

http://lexar.com/jumpdrive/index.html

http://www.transcendusa.com/Products/Modlist.asp?CatNo=75&LangNo=0&Func1No=1&Func2No=

for camera cards, there's a great comparison site:

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=6007

SD cards have "class" ratings; from what i can tell they are
effectively worthless; the "class 4" rating is somedthing like
6MB/sec.

If you have a digital SLR or advanced compact and you shoot
RAW (or you want to shoot raw) and it seems too slow, check the 
galbraith site out.  Your problem might be your storage.

> I have heard 
> of some drives that are fast on Windows but slow on Linux. This does not 
> sound right but I don't want to spend the money just to try diprove it.

it sounds insane to me but i have little direct experience with linux
and usb drives.


Others have suggested external hard drives.  You might look at sata
SSDs; the "OCZ core" ones have been coming down in price and also
have USB ports.

They apparently have some bugs that cause them to "stall" occasionally
when used as boot drives but I suspect when you are using them for
external bulk storage they are fine.  (just a guess)

http://www.lostcircuits.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=6

http://www.behardware.com/articles/731-7/ssd-product-review-intel-ocz-samsung-silicon-power-supertalent.html

http://dealnews.com/OCZ-2-5-60-GB-Serial-ATA-Internal-SSD-Hard-Drive-for-112-after-rebate-free-shipping/280111.html

re: USB and external power, it can definitely be an issue.  the
external case i bought for my old laptop drive has a two-headed USB
cable, so it can draw power from two separate USB ports.  This seems
to work fine so far (and in fact this el-cheapo external case has
no way to attach a power brick).  

When I forget and plug things in in the wrong order (must do two
host/hub connections first, then the drive) my mac tells me i'm
pulling too much power and temporarily shuts down the usb port
(on the hub built in to my monitor, no less).

danno
--
dan pritts
danno at umich.edu
734-929-9770