USB Flash Swap Speed?


TylerAW

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I'm intresting in getting a fast flash drive to use as Swap RAM on my Pandora and I was wondering do full 60 MB/s flash drives exist? Or would that speed not matter? Because I noticed most of them are 15MB/s and the only ones I find that reach close to 60 are the USB 3.0 ones.
 
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My understanding is that it's not possible for a USB flash-drive to attain that speed on either USB 2.0 or USB 3.0 at this time due to technical limitations with the types of flash technology usually used in them, as a whole.


The fastest flash-drives currently around, as you note, have around 15MB/sec write-speeds, which I suspect is simply approximated under ideal conditions - I would imagine that what you actually get is probably a bit less, or will fluctuate.
 
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My understanding is that it's not possible for a USB flash-drive to attain that speed on either USB 2.0 or USB 3.0 at this time due to technical limitations with the types of flash technology usually used in them, as a whole.


The fastest flash-drives currently around, as you note, have around 15MB/sec write-speeds, which I suspect is simply approximated under ideal conditions - I would imagine that what you actually get is probably a bit less, or will fluctuate.
Well what speeds would a USB 3.0 flash drive that does 30MB/s write speeds do on a USB 2.0 port?
 
In other news: according to Wikipedia, USB 2.0's "Theoretical Maximum Data Rate" is 60MB/second.


What are you planning on doing that'll require an extremely fast swap speed on the Pandora? I don't own one yet, but I can't imagine swap IO being the bottleneck on most operations.


Though for science purposes it would be fun to see what rate you can get.
 
Well what speeds would a USB 3.0 flash drive that does 30MB/s write speeds do on a USB 2.0 port?
I don't even know if it would be compatible, to be honest.


I only know that the theoretical maximum of USB 2.0 is, as Mr Rob notes, 60MB/sec, and that it's apparently not possible for NAND flash to have write-speeds as high as that theoretical maximum.


Assuming it would work (which I actually wouldn't imagine it would), I'd guess that it might be the same as one designed for USB 2.0, though - about 15MB/sec at best.
 
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In other news: according to Wikipedia, USB 2.0's "Theoretical Maximum Data Rate" is 60MB/second.


What are you planning on doing that'll require an extremely fast swap speed on the Pandora? I don't own one yet, but I can't imagine swap IO being the bottleneck on most operations.


Though for science purposes it would be fun to see what rate you can get.
Well for one I heard web browsing can lag when you open multiple tabs :p
 
Assuming it would work (which I actually wouldn't imagine it would), I'd guess that it might be the same as one designed for USB 2.0, though - about 15MB/sec at best.

I could be wrong, but I do think it is backwards compatible; i.e. plug a USB 3.0 device into a USB 2 port would work, but you would just get USB 2.0 speeds. Much like plugging in a USB 2.0 device into a USB 1.0 device (data transfer rates are agonizingly slow).


Though I don't have any USB 3.0 devices to test with at the moment.
 
Assuming it would work (which I actually wouldn't imagine it would), I'd guess that it might be the same as one designed for USB 2.0, though - about 15MB/sec at best.

I could be wrong, but I do think it is backwards compatible; i.e. plug a USB 3.0 device into a USB 2 port would work, but you would just get USB 2.0 speeds. Much like plugging in a USB 2.0 device into a USB 1.0 device (data transfer rates are agonizingly slow).


Though I don't have any USB 3.0 devices to test with at the moment.
Right but would you get the highest possible USB 2.0 speeds with a USB 3.0 device or would it not work that way? Really I can just test this stuff out but it would be awesome if the write speeds on a USB stick could be close to or the same as the DDR 333 RAM in the Pandora :p
 
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my usb 3 external hdd plugs into my usb 2 desktop no problem, except that it only reaches the usb 2 speeds
 
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