Re: [tlug] USB2 external HDD

["emiddleton@example.com" <emiddleton@example.com>]

Evan Monroig wrote:
> Darren Cook <darren@example.com> writes:
>
>   
>> I was surprised no replies. Is anyone using (writing to) a USB2 external
>> HDD (or 2GB+ flash drive) with linux kernel 2.6 and is happy/unhappy
>> with the speed? If so, which distro?
>>     
>
> I have one of 80GB, connected by USB2 on gentoo, and I didn't do any
> optimization. "hdparm -t /dev/sda1" gives a buffered disk read of about
> 25 MB/sec.  I guess that's not really fast (internal disk has 50+
> MB/sec), but not slow enough that I would notice, since I use it only
> for backup file transfer between computers.
>   

I tend to find the caching is excessive under 2.6 kernel with USB
mass-storage devices.  Worst case I had to wait for a minute to return
from an unmount while the buffer synced with the device.  I gather you
can get around this by mounting synchronously but that is not what you
want to do in general.

Edward