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i wonder if this is something similar to USB Supercharger [1]? i personally used this back in the USB 2.0 days to make running Firefox Portable bearable from wh

i wonder if this is something similar to USB Supercharger [1]? i personally used this back in the USB 2.0 days to make running Firefox Portable bearable from what was already the fastest 4k random flash drive [2]. The write speed increase was truly astonishing, there was nothing like it on the market. If you look at their CrystalDiskMark screenshots, the 4k random goes up from 0.01 MB/s to 10MB/s - no joke. On my faster drive the increase was only a mere 100x. [1] http://easyco.com/usb-sc.htm http://easyco.com/usb-sc.htm [2] http://www.amazon.com/Patriot-Xporter-Boost-Flash-PEF8GUSB/dp/B000VE2RP6 http://www.amazon.com/Patriot-Xporter-Boost-Flash-PEF8GUSB/d...

acqq 12y ago
It looks quite suspicious. Are you sure they don't just turn on the OS-provided write caching on the USB drive, which is by default turned off? No need for any additional program: http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/how-optimize-usb-drive-performance-windows-7.htm http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/how-optimize-usb-dri... There's nothing on http://easyco.com/usb-sc.htm http://easyco.com/usb-sc.htm which would assure me they are doing something special.
- leeoniya 12y ago
  pretty sure it was ntfs formatted, so it would have already been enabled. not only that, they actually have a custom partition that gets created and needs to be mounted for their stuff to work. it doesnt "just work", so there's more going on there.
  - acqq 12y ago
    If the write cache is on (as you claim it was!) you don't benchmark the times it takes for some write actually end on the medium, only the time be copied to the RAM, so the measurements you quote have no sense. They also mention on their page "when the light stops blinking it's over" which means exactly this: the software already consider everything copied, but the movement from the RAM to the device still goes on -- and that is not measured. Moreover, the OS can combine more writes to the same area to one to the device so you can actually observe less writes to the device. I still suspect that software to be a kind of snake oil.
    - leeoniya 12y ago
      interesting. i think i still have a license left if you want to test it out, lemme know.
      - acqq 12y ago
        Even without the license, I have already some time ago measured the overhead of copying a lot of small files with and without OS write cache. They cite 1 GB data with the average file size of 154 KB which gives around 6500 files to copy, all on FAT32 (see "How fast is SuperCharger?") The overhead of the write cache turned off for that number of files on the old stick I had (on FAT32) was around 2 minutes and that, of course, measuring "the blinking stops" in the "on" case.
- JohnTHaller 12y ago
  If I recall correctly, the way it worked was to save up and write MUCH larger blocks... far more than Windows write caching would do. That way it would do one large sequential write rather than multiple small random writes (which is a killer for most consumer flash drives and the limiting bit in terms of using portable apps from flash drives). And it abstracted it all so that the individual files were stored in its own container. As such, you had to be absolutely sure you were safe ejecting. Fun fact: you can get some of the same effect by using something like TrueCrypt containers on flash media as you wind up with a bit of the same behavior. The downside is that you can then only use it on a machine you have admin rights on or a machine where TrueCrypt is already installed and traveler mode enabled. Source: I created Portable Firefox and run PortableApps.com.
rasz_pl 12y ago
>USB Supercharger [1]? This seems to be clumping many small random writes into one big linear write. Another, much more impressive hack was TurboUSB/TurboHDD USB. +30% read speed. I think it was a custom driver that modified bulk transfer chink size.

acqq 12y ago

It looks quite suspicious. Are you sure they don't just turn on the OS-provided write caching on the USB drive, which is by default turned off? No need for any additional program: http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/how-optimize-usb-drive-performance-windows-7.htm http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/how-optimize-usb-dri... There's nothing on http://easyco.com/usb-sc.htm http://easyco.com/usb-sc.htm which would assure me they are doing something special.

leeoniya 12y ago
pretty sure it was ntfs formatted, so it would have already been enabled. not only that, they actually have a custom partition that gets created and needs to be mounted for their stuff to work. it doesnt "just work", so there's more going on there.
- acqq 12y ago
  If the write cache is on (as you claim it was!) you don't benchmark the times it takes for some write actually end on the medium, only the time be copied to the RAM, so the measurements you quote have no sense. They also mention on their page "when the light stops blinking it's over" which means exactly this: the software already consider everything copied, but the movement from the RAM to the device still goes on -- and that is not measured. Moreover, the OS can combine more writes to the same area to one to the device so you can actually observe less writes to the device. I still suspect that software to be a kind of snake oil.
  - leeoniya 12y ago
    interesting. i think i still have a license left if you want to test it out, lemme know.
    - acqq 12y ago
      Even without the license, I have already some time ago measured the overhead of copying a lot of small files with and without OS write cache. They cite 1 GB data with the average file size of 154 KB which gives around 6500 files to copy, all on FAT32 (see "How fast is SuperCharger?") The overhead of the write cache turned off for that number of files on the old stick I had (on FAT32) was around 2 minutes and that, of course, measuring "the blinking stops" in the "on" case.
JohnTHaller 12y ago
If I recall correctly, the way it worked was to save up and write MUCH larger blocks... far more than Windows write caching would do. That way it would do one large sequential write rather than multiple small random writes (which is a killer for most consumer flash drives and the limiting bit in terms of using portable apps from flash drives). And it abstracted it all so that the individual files were stored in its own container. As such, you had to be absolutely sure you were safe ejecting. Fun fact: you can get some of the same effect by using something like TrueCrypt containers on flash media as you wind up with a bit of the same behavior. The downside is that you can then only use it on a machine you have admin rights on or a machine where TrueCrypt is already installed and traveler mode enabled. Source: I created Portable Firefox and run PortableApps.com.

rasz_pl 12y ago

>USB Supercharger [1]? This seems to be clumping many small random writes into one big linear write. Another, much more impressive hack was TurboUSB/TurboHDD USB. +30% read speed. I think it was a custom driver that modified bulk transfer chink size.