Arch Linux

iBertus

Member

From: Greenville, NC

Registered: 2004-11-04

Posts: 2,228

Re: USB stick very slow

I like the idea presented by FUBAR in another thread to no use sync and setup autofs to automatically unmount the device after a sane timeout. This will ensure that if you forget and pull the device it will most likely not cause data loss.

The --timeout idea is copied from the AutoFS wiki. But thanks for the credit!

It doesn't work that well though: when you copy a lot of stuff to the stick, it goes pretty fast. Once the timeout has been reached, it's synced so it could take a while. All this time you can't pull out the stick. It's not a problem for me: I put the stick in a USB port on my frontpanel and wait for the LED of the stick to stop flashing before pulling it out.

I'm failing to see how any of these methods save write cycles vs. just using sync. It feels faster, but that's just becuase it isn't writing the data on demand, but rather doing it in chuncks. If you use AutoFS timeout, data is just being written every X-seconds instead of when the file transaction is requested.

lanrat

Member

From: Poland

Registered: 2003-10-28

Posts: 1,274

Re: USB stick very slow

Ext3 has commit parameter with the default of 5 seconds.

Sync all data and metadata every nrsec seconds. The default value is 5 seconds. Zero means default.

That would be a good choice for an external hd if you don't need specific filesystem.

JGC

Developer

Registered: 2003-12-03

Posts: 1,664

Re: USB stick very slow

I believe gnome-volume manager is suppose to mount small usb devices sync, and normal size usb devices async. Somehow it does not work that way atm, so you should blame gnome-volume-manager

Define small... The gnome developers specify 512MB and smaller as "small". I define every USB stick smaller than 64MB as small.

pressh

Developer/TU

From: Netherlands

Registered: 2005-08-14

Posts: 1,719

Re: USB stick very slow

I believe gnome-volume manager is suppose to mount small usb devices sync, and normal size usb devices async. Somehow it does not work that way atm, so you should blame gnome-volume-manager

Define small... The gnome developers specify 512MB and smaller as "small". I define every USB stick smaller than 64MB as small.

My 512MB mp3 player is mounted sync when I don't define it to be async in fstab. Maybe I'll take a look at it when I've got the time.
Atm I don't know if it is because g-v-m still thinks my device is "small" or it is something else.