Using a FLASH device..

[Rob423]

I just orderd a 4GB flash drive. (patriot) off newegg.

My question is most of these other drives come preloaded with a software called u3? or something like that. I was just wondering if it's something you can just get.

and also if i wanted to run mozilla firefox off it will this require an OS system on there?

and if i install an OS.. how much faster will booting and what not be with a flash drive instead of using your hard drive.

if i just use the flash drive as my primary main drive. will this blow away a 7200rpm drive?

and finally how long does it take to load an OS on one of these drives.

Thank You.
Rob.
__________

 

[bacis]

hi
to get these answers there is only a way.
u can try it and tell the rest on how fast is it the os booting.
however your mobo must support booting fron usb.

 

[Iceblue]

and if i install an OS.. how much faster will booting and what not be with a flash drive instead of using your hard drive.

if i just use the flash drive as my primary main drive. will this blow away a 7200rpm drive?

Let's see: For specs we have:

USB 2.0 = 480Mbps
ATA100 = 800Mbps
ATA133 = 1064Mbps
SATA = 1200Mbps
SATAII = 2400Mbps

OK, so you're starting with a significant disadvantage just in the interface. However, hard drives do not maintain the spec max as a "sustained" data transfer rate. Neither do flash drives. The flash drive you bought is spec'ed at 32MB/s read speed. This compares with an Hitachi Deskstar 7200 PATA 133 drive's speced sustained transfer rate of 64.8 - 31MB/s, depending on where the data is physically on the drive.

So, bottom line, it won't be faster.

 

[Rob423]

excellent thank you for that.

Ok so in what way can i use this FLash as an advantage in my PC

Since i have a 4GB stick, and i have 1GB physical memory... can this be said that i can have 5GB for Vista? or that is not a valid statement.

Cause i did read you can use removeable drives as shared memory for the system.

 

[sturm]

Using it for memory, if it were even possible would slow your system down even more since memory transfer speeds are faster than hard drive speeds.

On a side note, you can definitly transfer more porn to your work computer!

 

[fattony]

you can throw your page file on the usb drive, paging will be fast as hell