[ale] usb drives suck

[johnmills at speakeasy.net (John Mills)]

ALErs -

Short answer: Yep.

They do seem quite slow, whether the underlying storage unit is a 2.5"HDD, 
3.5" HDD, or even a DVD. I've also had problems with 2.5" models 
overheating and failing somewhere far into a big transfer. <#$%&*^%!!!/>

Another limiting factor has been the underlying fat32 file systems I've 
had on my units. On the other hand that makes them very handy as Win/Lin 
backup and transfer media.

Plus, the 2.5" adapters for laptop HDDs are real cheap when you already 
have a drive you can use.

TANSTAAFL, I guess.

  - Mills

On Mon, 25 Jan 2010, Geoffrey wrote:

> Maybe I don't have a good understanding of these things, but every time
> I try to write a substantial amount of data, gigs of data, it seems to
> take forever and the load average is through the roof.  Mostly it's %wait.

> Am I expecting more then these things are capable of?
> -- 
> Until later, Geoffrey