Best format for USB flash drives nowadays?

On 10/16/2015 8:17 AM, Warren Oates wrote:

I would avoid this format:

http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=18983

Ouch!

I bet the CIA has some of those.

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On 10/16/2015 4:31 PM, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Ed Light wrote:

On all my flash drives I've asked support what size sectors to use with
NTFS to get the best speed, and none of them said not to use it, or that
it would have a disadvantage.

Personally I wouldn't trust tech support for a consumer product like that
to know what they're talking about, but that's just me.


I'm sure that's where your experience points you.

My several USB drives have all been ok. I really think the NTFS helps to
keep the file system solid. Maybe it does a little more wear? But I'm
just using them for backup.

I do mirror my main backup thumb drive to another one after I back up,
in case it gets cooked somehow. I keep them both on me, even in bed ...
in case of fire and escape.

Plus I have the critical stuff in the cloud.

The only disadvantage is, I think Windows can decide to not release an
NTFS very easily, relating it to disk drives. I'd have to try a FAT
drive to compare.


--
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In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Ed Light wrote:
On 10/16/2015 4:31 PM, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Ed Light wrote:

On all my flash drives I've asked support what size sectors to use with
NTFS to get the best speed, and none of them said not to use it, or that
it would have a disadvantage.

Personally I wouldn't trust tech support for a consumer product like that
to know what they're talking about, but that's just me.

I'm sure that's where your experience points you.

My several USB drives have all been ok. I really think the NTFS helps to
keep the file system solid. Maybe it does a little more wear? But I'm
just using them for backup.

I do mirror my main backup thumb drive to another one after I back up,
in case it gets cooked somehow. I keep them both on me, even in bed ...
in case of fire and escape.

Plus I have the critical stuff in the cloud.

The only disadvantage is, I think Windows can decide to not release an
NTFS very easily, relating it to disk drives. I'd have to try a FAT
drive to compare.

Reliability wise NTFS _should_ be better than FAT32 because it does
journaling, but that journaling also has wear and speed sacrifices, like
for the Linux ext3 and later file systems.

The ext3 file system also has other problems with flash devices as
described in the article I linked to, I don't know how they relate
to NTFS.

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On 10/17/2015 8:13 PM, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:


Reliability wise NTFS _should_ be better than FAT32 because it does
journaling, but that journaling also has wear and speed sacrifices, like
for the Linux ext3 and later file systems.

My NTFS'd Mushkin Ventura Pro 32GB USB 3.0 drive doesn't have any speed
problems that I can see. Nor the USB 2.0 drives. I always ask the
manufacturer what sector size to use when formatting, for the best
speed. I did comparison tests on one USB 2.0 (now dead by someone
else's computer killing it) showing the read and write speeds with
different file size groups, with different sector sizes, and the sector
size made a *really* big differince! So, if you got the sector size
wrong, NTFS really would affect performance.

--
Ed Light

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On 10/18/2015 3:23 AM, Ed Light wrote:

speed. I did comparison tests on one USB 2.0 (now dead by someone
else's computer killing it) showing the read and write speeds with
different file size groups, with different sector sizes, and the sector
size made a *really* big differince! So, if you got the sector size
wrong, NTFS really would affect performance.

OK, I found screen shots of the tests. I used HD Tune on a Kingston
DataTraveler 200 32GB USB 2.0. It's actually still in my pocket. A
Corsair was the victim.

Here, using 64K sectors, is FAT32 vs NTFS, showing the MB/s:

File Size K / Read / Write
------------------------
FAT32/NTFS
4 4/6 1/1
8 11/11 2/2
16 16/17 4/4
32 24/24 6/8
64 31/31 7/7
128 30/30 10/10
256 31/30 8/10
512 31/31 16/10
1024 31/29 16/10
2048 31/30 16/8
4096 31/30 14/10
8192 31/30 14/10

NTFS shows some real speed loss writing files 512K and up, in this case.

On my Mushkin Ventura Pro USB 3.0, though, big files go on really fast
like a hard drive, so if NTFS is slowing it down, it's not much of a
concern. Though I suppose it could be holding up little files.

Anyhow, I prefer the greater integrity of the NTFS, and need to backup
huge files sometimes, eliminating the FAT 32.

--
Ed Light

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More interesting HD Tune results on the Kingston USB 2.0, that I found.


FAT 32, 16K sectors vs 64K sectors.

From 512K files to 8192K files, the 16K format averages 6 MB/s and the
64K averages 15 MB/s !!! Wow. Probably just for the Kingston.


Comparing all 64K sectors, FAT32 vs exFAT, they read pretty similar.
Here's writes, FAT32/exFAT:

File Size K / MB/s
----------------
8 1/2
16 4/3
32 6/11
64 7/13
128 10/13
256 8/16
512 16/13
1024 16/13
2048 15/16
4096 14/16
8192 14/16

Overall, the exFAT beats the FAT32.

I don't have HD Tune on my system now, but recommend it for trying out
the speed of different formats.

--
Ed Light

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On 2015-10-18 07:05, Ed Light wrote:
More interesting HD Tune results on the Kingston USB 2.0, that I found.


Maybe time to drop the Mac group out of replies ...?

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Ed Light wrote:
More interesting HD Tune results on the Kingston USB 2.0, that I found.

Very interesting, thanks for sharing. I've saved your posts for future
reference.

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On 10/18/2015 6:42 AM, Alan Browne wrote:
On 2015-10-18 07:05, Ed Light wrote:
More interesting HD Tune results on the Kingston USB 2.0, that I found.


Maybe time to drop the Mac group out of replies ...?


I would but maybe someone there who's not posting is eating up my posts! ;-)

--
Ed Light

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