Arch Linux

Shagbag

Member

Registered: 2006-10-25

Posts: 259

USB install slooooowwwwww

I've installed Arch to a USB stick and have noticed that performance is slow as everything freezes while it reads/writes to (USB) disk.  I don't know if it's reading or writing to disk and I don't know what is causing it to do so.  I have 1.5GB of RAM and swap is not being used so it can't be that.  I'm perplexed.  Is there anyway I can find out what the cause is (some sort of I/O monitor app, perhaps)?

R00KIE

Forum Fellow

From: Between a computer and a chair

Registered: 2008-09-14

Posts: 4,734

Re: USB install slooooowwwwww

Have you ever considered that it may be just a slow flash drive plus usb isn't the fastest thing on earth too. I have arch on a flash drive too and the speed is very bearable, again not the fastest flash drive in the world but not the slowest too .
Also, don't forget to put noatime,nodiratime in your mount options as the wiki says, that should help a bit.

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R00KIE
Tm90aGluZyB0byBzZWUgaGVyZSwgbW92ZSBhbG9uZy4K

jo3

Member

Registered: 2007-08-18

Posts: 112

Re: USB install slooooowwwwww

I'm curious if it's usb 1.0 or 2?

lilsirecho

Veteran

Registered: 2003-10-24

Posts: 5,000

Re: USB install slooooowwwwww

Many USB devices run at USB 1.1 speed.

In my computer, I utilize Compact Flash devices in r/o (mostly) and obtain 42MB/sec read speed.  The compact flash devices are used in IDE mode.

SD devices cannot achieve that speed for read or write, especially if used as USB devices.  Three MB/sec might well be the write speed for a typical USB flash device.

I do not know of any application of SD flash devices in place of an IDE device as is done with adapters with compact flash devices.

My system uses three such compact devices in a raid array running 125 MB/sec read speed.  They are used primarily as r/o for pacman cachedir.

Perhaps you are aware of these factors anyhow!!!

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