How to increase system system performance
Tae Song
Windows performance.
If you have a spare USB flash drive or you are willing to get a cheap say
1GB flash drive.
First we plug in the flash drive.
Go to Disk Manager and assign it a drive letter, like Z: (this is just to
get it out of the way and optional)
Go to Advanced system settings, Evironment variables.
Change the Temp variable under User to Z:\ (I didn't see any point creating
folders, but that's optional)
Change the Temp variable under System variable to Z:\
This will cut down on I/O traffic to the hard drive. Starting an app like
Word, would cause the HD to read the program into memory while at the same
time writing into the drive, temporary files. This causes an I/O queue to
form and degrade Windows performance. By off loading some of the I/O
traffic to another storage device, the hard drive read/write head doesn't
have to move around as much either. All performance gains.
Another trick I tried was moving Windows Search Index to a flash drive, but
it won't let me select even a 16GB flash drive. Even though the Index
doesn't grow beyond 1GB. It's max size seems to be just under 1GB. You can
move to it to a removable drive, though. I rebuilt the Index on an external
500GB USB drive. Again, this cuts down I/O traffic to the internal hard
drive. More performance gain.
Another idea I tried was creating a pagefile on a 16GB USB flash drive. I
found out you can only have 4095MB pagefile or just under 25% of total
capacity. I don't know what the rule of thumb is though, because on the
internal 1TB hard drive I could create up to the max free space, which was
about 700,000GB. Not that I needed that much, but just to test. I'm
actually running with 4GB RAM and no page file, at the moment. Even with
lots of 100MB picture (scanned documents/photos) open, virtual memory wasn't
required. I would like to use most of an 8GB flash drive. Possibly use it
for both temp files and virtual memory.
I don't know if pagefile is the same thing as running ReadyBoost. I don't
think it is, but I will have to look into that. I am not using Readyboost,
since I read it doesn't do much good if you have more than 2GB of RAM.
Now, if you have a 2nd or 3rd internal hard drive, you can create a pagefile
on the 2nd drive and search index on the 3rd or index on 2nd and page file
on 3rd. I highly recommended using a USB drive for temp files. 1-2GB are
pretty cheap. I don't think you need a larger one unless you are working
with full length movies, but I don't for certain.
They do something like this on big database servers, some might refer to as
"mainframes". The index and database are each on their own storage device.
The aggregated bandwidth offers even better performance then RAID and the
best part is you can implement it along side with RAID for insane amount of
storage I/O performance.
Anyways, that's it.
If you need more detailed info on setting this up, leave a little note in
the newsgroup. If I don't get to it, I'm sure someone else will help you
out.
Tae Song
"Tae Song" <tae_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:E4A312C4-33A9-4FD8...@microsoft.com...
I forgot to mention, putting pagefile on USB flash drive doesn't work. I
think Windows tries to create it during boot, but USB drivers don't get
loaded so it can't access the flash drive to create it. (Probably why you
can't boot in to Windows from USB drives, I even tried enabling BIOS support
for USB drive which works for booting Linux). When I got into Windows and
checked, the pagefile never got created. But if you have another internal
hard drive or maybe even eSATA (in non-ACHI/RAID mode) you can create a
pagefile there.
Done. I think.
Bill in Co.
> I thought I would share this with you all, a few little tricks to boost
> Windows performance.
>
> If you have a spare USB flash drive or you are willing to get a cheap say
> 1GB flash drive.
>
> First we plug in the flash drive.
>
> Go to Disk Manager and assign it a drive letter, like Z: (this is just to
> get it out of the way and optional)
>
> Go to Advanced system settings, Evironment variables.
>
> Change the Temp variable under User to Z:\ (I didn't see any point
> creating
> folders, but that's optional)
>
> Change the Temp variable under System variable to Z:\
>
> This will cut down on I/O traffic to the hard drive. Starting an app like
> Word, would cause the HD to read the program into memory while at the same
> time writing into the drive, temporary files. This causes an I/O queue to
> form and degrade Windows performance. By off loading some of the I/O
> traffic to another storage device, the hard drive read/write head doesn't
> have to move around as much either. All performance gains.
I don't think so!! There will be a performance LOSS, in large part due to
the much longer write times to a flash drive. Also, it's generally a poor
idea to have so many continuous writes to a flash drive, as flash drives
have a more limited number of write cycles.
<snip> rest of this post
measekite Da Monkey
>Windows performance.
>
> If you have a spare USB flash drive or you are willing to get a cheap say
> 1GB flash drive.
>
> First we plug in the flash drive.
>
> Go to Disk Manager and assign it a drive letter, like Z: (this is just to
> get it out of the way and optional)
>
> Go to Advanced system settings, Evironment variables.
>
> Change the Temp variable under User to Z:\ (I didn't see any point
> creating folders, but that's optional)
>
> Change the Temp variable under System variable to Z:\
>
So what happens when you remove the flash drive and the TEMP variable points
to a non-existant drive?
Pegasus [MVP]
>Windows performance.
Seeing that flash drives are much slower than hard disks, I wonder if your
measures have the desired effect. Could we have some performance figures,
complete with the test methods you applied so that anyone can perform the
same tests on his machine?
Pegasus [MVP]
"measekite Da Monkey" <meas...@DaMonkey.org> wrote in message
news:FfUXl.5841$fD....@flpi145.ffdc.sbc.com...
>
>
> So what happens when you remove the flash drive and the TEMP variable
> points to a non-existant drive?
Windows will have very serious problems.
Jerry
"Tae Song" <tae_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:E4A312C4-33A9-4FD8...@microsoft.com...
Tae Song
"measekite Da Monkey" <meas...@DaMonkey.org> wrote in message
news:FfUXl.5841$fD....@flpi145.ffdc.sbc.com...
Good question... so I pulled out the flash drive.
I started up Outlook (which today's service pack for Office XP fixed. In
Office XP, Outlook does not work if you don't already have Outlook Express
installed. It hadn't worked till early today after the latest update. I
never installed Outlook Express on this Vista system.) I gave me an error
message it couldn't create Normal.dot or something. I didn't make a note of
it, sorry. It didn't display normally. Address bar/field displays
outlook:today, but in the main window it's says Navigation to the webpage
was canceled. Under that, it says What you can try: bullet Retype the
address.
I Open up Word everything seems to be working OK. Few minutes later message
says, "Saving the AutoRecovery file is postponed for Normal.dot."
I opened Access, Power Point, Excel, GIMP (which took much longer than
normal to open). Some minor problems, but nothing catastrophic.
Then I tried replying to this post... it didn't quote your message.
Putting in the flash drive back now.
swine...@gmail.com
> "measekite Da Monkey" <measek...@DaMonkey.org> wrote in messagenews:FfUXl.5841$fD....@flpi145.ffdc.sbc.com...
You will have problems in the long run. My suggestion is to wipe your
system clean. Remove Vista and install Ubuntu.
Tae Song
OK, I plugged the flash drive in Process Monitor pops up with an error
message... Out of memory: Unable to allocate a memory block of size 8388608.
Clicked OK, it closes.
ClipMagic says The file
:C\Users\User\AppData\Roaming\ClipMagic\clipmagic.qdb is corrupt. Disable
automatic backups and restore. Clicked OK, it's still running.
Some minor problems, but nothing major.
measekite Da Monkey
You really are stupid.
Tae Song
"Pegasus [MVP]" <ne...@microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:O8a9Ndg6...@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
You have to take in to account access hard drives are mechanical and have
access time of ms, where as flash drives have an access time down in to
nanoseconds.
Tae Song
"Jerry" <ChiefZe...@MSN.com> wrote in message
news:#6nvo$g6JHA...@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
That would work. But how much memory are you going to allocate to RAM
drive? 1GB flash are practically free these days. They were giving them
out for free at a community college if you signed up for a computer class.
Well... technically that's not free... but... they gave you one 1GB flash
drive if you signed up for a class, that's more accurate.
Tae Song
<swine...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:34d81558-6188-406e...@y7g2000yqa.googlegroups.com...
I have Fedora 9 on another machine, does that count?
Bill in Co.
The write time is much larger for a flash drive.
Pegasus [MVP]
I recommend you do some reading about the difference between RAM and flash
memory. It's huge! Did you actually bother to measure the change in
performance or is this just an idea you have, not backed up by any
reproducible measurements?
Bill in Co.
> "Tae Song" <tae_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:4E87102D-4004-4699...@microsoft.com...
>>
>> "Pegasus [MVP]" <ne...@microsoft.com> wrote in message
>> news:O8a9Ndg6...@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
>>>
>>> "Tae Song" <tae_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>>> news:E4A312C4-33A9-4FD8...@microsoft.com...
>>>> I thought I would share this with you all, a few little tricks to boost
>>>> Windows performance.
>>>
>>> Seeing that flash drives are much slower than hard disks, I wonder if
>>> your measures have the desired effect. Could we have some performance
>>> figures, complete with the test methods you applied so that anyone can
>>> perform the same tests on his machine?
>>>
>>
>> You have to take in to account access hard drives are mechanical and have
>> access time of ms, where as flash drives have an access time down in to
>> nanoseconds.
>
> I recommend you do some reading about the difference between RAM and flash
> memory. It's huge!
Seconded.
> Did you actually bother to measure the change in
> performance or is this just an idea you have, not backed up by any
> reproducible measurements?
the latter - obviously. The bottom line here is that it was, and is, very
bad advice.
Pegasus [MVP]
Try this short paragraph for a starter:
"Modern flash drives have USB 2.0 connectivity. However, they do not
currently use the full 480 Mbit/s (60MB/s) the USB 2.0 Hi-Speed
specification supports due to technical limitations inherent in NAND flash.
The fastest drives currently available use a dual channel controller,
although they still fall considerably short of the transfer rate possible
from a current generation hard disk, or the maximum high speed USB
throughput."
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_flash_drive
Or this:
"A typical "desktop HDD" might store between 120 GB and 2 TB although rarely
above 500GB of data (based on US market data[14]) rotate at 5,400 to 10,000
rpm and have a media transfer rate of 1 Gbit/s or higher. Some newer have
3Gbit/s."
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk
Now go and do some actual measurements before claiming that your idea will
"increase" performance. It won't.
Peter Foldes
Huh ??? What are you saying. For sure as I am typing this answer Outlook works
without having to have Outlook Express.
Get your answers straight Tae Song
--
Peter
Please Reply to Newsgroup for the benefit of others
Requests for assistance by email can not and will not be acknowledged.
propman
.....and that information address's the following quote how?
<quote on>
This will cut down on I/O traffic to the hard drive. Starting an app
like Word, would cause the HD to read the program into memory while at
the same time writing into the drive, temporary files. This causes an
I/O queue to form and degrade Windows performance. By off loading some
of the I/O traffic to another storage device, the hard drive read/write
head doesn't have to move around as much either. All performance gains.
<quote off>
Richard Urban
that others had stated hours before) leave a lot to be desired. Bad advice
is worse than no advice. Read and learn (in other words - lurk).
--
Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience
"Tae Song" <tae_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:D7A72456-5C8E-4027...@microsoft.com...
Tae Song
"Peter Foldes" <ok...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:eq56qlh6...@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
For certain, if you install Office XP without Outlook Express on Vista.
Outlook will come back with a message saying install Outlook Express.
Outlook runs on top of Outlook Express.
I was using Windows Live Mail, so I didn't bother. I noticed they released
a service pack for Office XP today and by accident I startup Outlook and
noticed I could get in.
Tae Song
>
> "Tae Song" <tae_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:4E87102D-4004-4699...@microsoft.com...
>>
>> "Pegasus [MVP]" <ne...@microsoft.com> wrote in message
>> news:O8a9Ndg6...@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
>>>
>>> "Tae Song" <tae_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>>> news:E4A312C4-33A9-4FD8...@microsoft.com...
>>>>I thought I would share this with you all, a few little tricks to boost
>>>>Windows performance.
>>>
>>> Seeing that flash drives are much slower than hard disks, I wonder if
>>> your measures have the desired effect. Could we have some performance
>>> figures, complete with the test methods you applied so that anyone can
>>> perform the same tests on his machine?
>>>
>>
>> You have to take in to account access hard drives are mechanical and have
>> access time of ms, where as flash drives have an access time down in to
>> nanoseconds.
>
> Try this short paragraph for a starter:
> "Modern flash drives have USB 2.0 connectivity. However, they do not
> currently use the full 480 Mbit/s (60MB/s) the USB 2.0 Hi-Speed
> specification supports due to technical limitations inherent in NAND
> flash. The fastest drives currently available use a dual channel
> controller, although they still fall considerably short of the transfer
> rate possible from a current generation hard disk, or the maximum high
> speed USB throughput."
> Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_flash_drive
>
It says "currently" , but it doesn't say when it was written.
Microsoft offers Readyboost, so perhaps things have changed since this was
written.
> Or this:
> "A typical "desktop HDD" might store between 120 GB and 2 TB although
> rarely above 500GB of data (based on US market data[14]) rotate at 5,400
> to 10,000 rpm and have a media transfer rate of 1 Gbit/s or higher. Some
> newer have 3Gbit/s."
> Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk
>
> Now go and do some actual measurements before claiming that your idea will
> "increase" performance. It won't.
>
My configuration isn't going to be the same as yours.
Anyways it doesn't take any kind of test to know USB mass storage is still
very fast.
Richard Urban
you don't do news groups you don't need Outlook Express.
--
Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience
"Tae Song" <tae_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:9924FDC6-DB94-4D11...@microsoft.com...
Michael
> "Tae Song" <tae_s...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:4E87102D-4004-4699...@microsoft.com...
>
>
>
>
>
> > "Pegasus [MVP]" <n...@microsoft.com> wrote in message
> >news:O8a9Ndg6...@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
>
> >> "Tae Song" <tae_s...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
Pegasus is right, I think what a lot of you don't understand about
flash memory is that it's not access speeds that are fast, it
ADRESSING (seek) speeds that are fast. Flash memory is very fast at
being able to find data within the chip itself. But there are many
more factors than just the addressing speed. First you have the USB
port which is only capable of 480 Mbit/s versus today's SATA 3.0 Gbit/
s. And both of those interfaces rarely if not never reach those ideal
values. You have to keep in mind that the controller within a USB
memory device is a huge limiting factor. The memory itself may be very
fast, but the computer isn't talking to that, it's talking to its
controller, and if you are using cheap USB sticks, then that
controller is very likely to be low quality, and slow. Go google some
benchmarks, you'll see that flash memory isn't all that fast.
Moving page file and other things away form the OS drive, that I could
see having some possible change. If you really want some significant
speed increases, check out RAIDing and don't buy cheap RAM, and use a
page file, page files do a whole lot more than dealing with minimized
programs, there are tons of background applications that don't need to
be in memory constantly because they don't do much once they are
loaded (software updaters, printer/scanner stuff, etc).
Gene E. Bloch
RAM...
--
Gene E. Bloch letters0x40blochg0x2Ecom
John John - MVP
The Readyboost cache isn't necessarily faster than the pagefile, random
reads are faster on flash drives but sequential reads are faster on hard
disks. The Memory Manager will decide which is faster and where to get
the cached information.
For sequential read and writes USB flash drives are not faster than hard
drives, they are much slower. That, along with the other "minor
problems" mentioned in your other posts, are reason enough to forget
about using this "performance" tweak.
John
Pegasus [MVP]
"propman" <pro...@nowhere.ca> wrote in message
news:h0pcrq$jfs$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
>
> <quote on>
> This will cut down on I/O traffic to the hard drive. Starting an app like
> Word, would cause the HD to read the program into memory while at the same
> time writing into the drive, temporary files. This causes an I/O queue to
> form and degrade Windows performance. By off loading some of the I/O
> traffic to another storage device, the hard drive read/write head doesn't
> have to move around as much either. All performance gains.
> <quote off>
Nice words but so far the OP has not offered the slightest evidence that his
idea speeds up a machine. Let's see a few tests that anyone can reproduce!
Monitor
"Tae Song" <tae_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:E4A312C4-33A9-4FD8...@microsoft.com...
>I thought I would share this with you all, a few little tricks to boost
>Windows performance.
>
> 1GB flash drive.
>
> First we plug in the flash drive.
>
> Go to Disk Manager and assign it a drive letter, like Z: (this is just to
> get it out of the way and optional)
>
> Go to Advanced system settings, Evironment variables.
>
> Change the Temp variable under User to Z:\ (I didn't see any point
> creating folders, but that's optional)
>
> Change the Temp variable under System variable to Z:\
>
> Word, would cause the HD to read the program into memory while at the same
> time writing into the drive, temporary files. This causes an I/O queue to
> form and degrade Windows performance. By off loading some of the I/O
> traffic to another storage device, the hard drive read/write head doesn't
> have to move around as much either. All performance gains.
>
Here is how geniuses work:
1. They have a brilliant idea.
2. They test it.
3. They test it again.
4. They have it verified by someone else.
5. They publish it.
6. They enjoy the praise and the fame.
It seems you jumped from Step 1 directly to Step 5, expecting to be showered
with praise. Instead you need to scrape a lot of egg off your face.
Tae Song
"Monitor" <nos...@spam.com> wrote in message
news:uAFntBn6...@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
Thank you, I thought it was good idea too.
I never expected praise, I just thought it was an idea worth trying out.
I never claim to be a genius, but thanks for the benefit of the doubt.
I eat eggs breakfast... so I can live with it.
Here is another idea, I don't know if anyone thought of it before...
How about Windows support for MAID (massive array of inexpensive drives)
using USB flash drives.
Would that be cool or what?
R. C. White
Most of your posts in other threads sound intelligent. And this thread
started off sounding like a possibly good idea. But then, in your third
post, you said this:
"I started up Outlook (which today's service pack for Office XP fixed. In
Office XP, Outlook does not work if you don't already have Outlook Express
installed. It hadn't worked till early today after the latest update. I
never installed Outlook Express on this Vista system.)"
That paragraph lost all your credibility for me. :>(
First, of course, "Outlook does not work if you don't already have Outlook
Express" is an obviously false claim, because many of us are running
Outlook in Vista and Win7 RC. And then you said, "I never installed Outlook
Express on this Vista system." This indicates a serious lack of knowledge
of both OE and Vista, because OE cannot be installed on Vista.
At that point, I turned you off and read the rest of the thread just to see
how far you would go and whether others would correct your errors. :>( I'm
glad to see that several knowledgeable readers did.
RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
r...@grandecom.net
Microsoft Windows MVP
Windows Live Mail 2009 (14.0.8064.0206) in Win7 Ultimate x64 RC 7100
"Tae Song" <tae_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:E4A312C4-33A9-4FD8...@microsoft.com...
> I thought I would share this with you all, a few little tricks to boost
> Windows performance.
<SNIP long cross-posted post full of inaccurate information and advice>
Tae Song
"R. C. White" <r...@grandecom.net> wrote in message
news:uKfvGir6...@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
Why Outlook 2002 and 2003 require Outlook Express
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/287686
Tom Willett
can't be uninstalled from the O/S. You can take away access to it, but you
can uninstall it. Not without causing serious problems, anyway.
"Tae Song" <tae_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:719E396C-A711-4E7E...@microsoft.com...
:
: "R. C. White" <r...@grandecom.net> wrote in message
:
:
:
Tae Song
"Tom Willett" <t...@youreadaisyifyoudo.com> wrote in message
news:#BivIFs6...@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
Windows Vista doesn't come with Outlook Express at all, it comes with
Windows Mail.
R. C. White
You were misled by an out-of-date KB article that has not been updated to
recognize Vista, even though it says "Last Review: May 4, 2009". It applies
only to Outlook 2002 and 2003, both of which predate Vista by several years.
I'll try to bring this to the attention of someone at Microsoft to get it
corrected.
You've cross-posted to two WinXP NGs AND to two Vista NGs.
You have an excuse, but you still are wrong. :^{
RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
r...@grandecom.net
Microsoft Windows MVP
Windows Live Mail 2009 (14.0.8064.0206) in Win7 Ultimate x64 RC 7100
"Tae Song" <tae_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:719E396C-A711-4E7E...@microsoft.com...
>
> "R. C. White" <r...@grandecom.net> wrote in message
> news:uKfvGir6...@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
>> Hi, Tae Song.
>>
>> Most of your posts in other threads sound intelligent. And this thread
>> started off sounding like a possibly good idea. But then, in your third
>> post, you said this:
>>
>> "I started up Outlook (which today's service pack for Office XP fixed.
>> In
>> Office XP, Outlook does not work if you don't already have Outlook
>> Express
>> installed. It hadn't worked till early today after the latest update. I
>> never installed Outlook Express on this Vista system.)"
>>
>> That paragraph lost all your credibility for me. :>(
>>
>> First, of course, "Outlook does not work if you don't already have
>> Outlook Express" is an obviously false claim, because many of us are
>> running Outlook in Vista and Win7 RC. And then you said, "I never
>> installed Outlook Express on this Vista system." This indicates a
>> serious lack of knowledge of both OE and Vista, because OE cannot be
>> installed on Vista.
>>
>> At that point, I turned you off and read the rest of the thread just to
>> see how far you would go and whether others would correct your errors.
>> :>( I'm glad to see that several knowledgeable readers did.
>>
>> RC
>>
Unknown
> The whole thing is a moot point. OE is always installed on the computer,
> and
> can't be uninstalled from the O/S. You can take away access to it, but you
> can uninstall it. Not without causing serious problems, anyway.
Tae Song
Read the through the thread, I said I have Office XP installed. Office XP
installs Outlook 2002, which didn't work until the recent Office XP update
couple days ago.
Tom Willett
"Unknown" <unk...@unknown.kom> wrote in message
news:6adYl.31708$yr3....@nlpi068.nbdc.sbc.com...
:
: "Tom Willett" <t...@youreadaisyifyoudo.com> wrote in message
Yep.
:
:
Tae Song
"Bill in Co." <not_rea...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:Ob3B5Pg6...@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
> Tae Song wrote:
>> I thought I would share this with you all, a few little tricks to boost
>> Windows performance.
>>
>> 1GB flash drive.
>>
>> First we plug in the flash drive.
>>
>> Go to Disk Manager and assign it a drive letter, like Z: (this is just
>> to
>> get it out of the way and optional)
>>
>> Go to Advanced system settings, Evironment variables.
>>
>> Change the Temp variable under User to Z:\ (I didn't see any point
>> creating
>> folders, but that's optional)
>>
>> Change the Temp variable under System variable to Z:\
>>
>> This will cut down on I/O traffic to the hard drive. Starting an app
>> like
>> Word, would cause the HD to read the program into memory while at the
>> same
>> time writing into the drive, temporary files. This causes an I/O queue
>> to
>> form and degrade Windows performance. By off loading some of the I/O
>> traffic to another storage device, the hard drive read/write head doesn't
>> have to move around as much either. All performance gains.
>
> to the much longer write times to a flash drive. Also, it's generally a
> poor idea to have so many continuous writes to a flash drive, as flash
> drives have a more limited number of write cycles.
>
> <snip> rest of this post
>
You don't need an extremely high write speed. A lot of times temp files are
just empty files, many are 0 bytes. Almost all are under 700KB. Even at a
write speed of of say a low of 5MB/s is still only a fraction of a sec.
This keeps the read/write head from thrashing about creating and updating
file records.
And just to up the ante, I enabled disk compression on the USB drives to
reduce the size of the writes.
Richard Urban
read/write cycles. I have worn out 4 in the last 2-3 years. They just die.
They are NOT meant for continuous reading/writing.
--
Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience
"Tae Song" <tae_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:09053F32-97F6-4C71...@microsoft.com...
John John - MVP
This notion of yours is getting loopier with each of your replies. Now
you think that enabling compression is going to compensate for the
slower USB flash drives and increase performance because the writes are
going to be smaller, yet you fail to take into consideration the
overhead involved into compressing and decompressing files.
John
Tae Song
"John John - MVP" <aude...@nbnot.nb.ca> wrote in message
news:ejs#sh06JH...@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
Over head is insignificant, even for a single core CPUs. 8.5GB/s transfer
rate from RAM is slow for a CPU. Compression is just something to do while
it waits for the next byte to come by. And I'm running on a Core2 Quad.
Overhead for compression is next to nothing.
John John - MVP
So that will make your USB drive faster than an internal hard drive? If
that is the case why not just compress the files on the hard drive and
make the internal hard drive that much faster than the USB flash drive?
You are grasping at straws, the plain facts are that USB flash drives
are slower than internal hard disks and whether you want to admit it or
not there is an overhead when file compression is involved and even if
you compress the files the USB drive will still be slower than the
internal drive. The subject of your post is "How to increase system
system performance" yet everything that you propose (including
compression) has the opposite effect!
John
Pegasus [MVP]
>
>
> Over head is insignificant, even for a single core CPUs. 8.5GB/s
> transfer rate from RAM is slow for a CPU. Compression is just something
> to do while it waits for the next byte to come by. And I'm running on a
> Core2 Quad. Overhead for compression is next to nothing.
It's been suggested several times before: How about backing up some of your
exotic suggestions with actual and reproducible measurements? Without those
your posts are little else than a soap box oratory: Great for you if you
like to hear yourself speak but not taken seriously by anyone in the
audience.
Peter Foldes
Drop this issue while you are still ahead (maybe not). You are beating a dead horse
with this crap. Move on and go back to answering posts without the CBS.log for every
issue.
--
Peter
Please Reply to Newsgroup for the benefit of others
Requests for assistance by email can not and will not be acknowledged.
"Tae Song" <tae_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:142B0724-3BB6-4363...@microsoft.com...
>
> <swine...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:34d81558-6188-406e...@y7g2000yqa.googlegroups.com...
>> On Jun 10, 2:17 pm, "Tae Song" <tae_s...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>> "measekite Da Monkey" <measek...@DaMonkey.org> wrote in
>>> messagenews:FfUXl.5841$fD....@flpi145.ffdc.sbc.com...
>>>
>>> Good question... so I pulled out the flash drive.
>>>
>>> I started up Outlook (which today's service pack for Office XP fixed. In
>>> Office XP, Outlook does not work if you don't already have Outlook Express
>>> installed. It hadn't worked till early today after the latest update. I
>>> never installed Outlook Express on this Vista system.) I gave me an error
>>> message it couldn't create Normal.dot or something. I didn't make a note of
>>> it, sorry. It didn't display normally. Address bar/field displays
>>> outlook:today, but in the main window it's says Navigation to the webpage
>>> was canceled. Under that, it says What you can try: bullet Retype the
>>> address.
>>>
>>> I Open up Word everything seems to be working OK. Few minutes later message
>>> says, "Saving the AutoRecovery file is postponed for Normal.dot."
>>>
>>> I opened Access, Power Point, Excel, GIMP (which took much longer than
>>> normal to open). Some minor problems, but nothing catastrophic.
>>>
>>> Then I tried replying to this post... it didn't quote your message.
>>>
>>> Putting in the flash drive back now.
>>
>> You will have problems in the long run. My suggestion is to wipe your
>> system clean. Remove Vista and install Ubuntu.
>
> I have Fedora 9 on another machine, does that count?
Tae Song
"John John - MVP" <aude...@nbnet.nb.ca> wrote in message
news:#MRFvm26...@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
OK very last post on this subject... hopefully.
Yes, in a certain specific case compression could make even a slow USB drive
faster than even a hard drive. The requirement would be the file would have
to be very compressible.
I did try compressing the whole hard drive to see if would improve
performance on a Windows XP machine. I didn't know it at the time, but
Windows will compress the Bootmgr if you don't exclude it. Nice of
Microsoft to at least tell you what the problem is when you try to reboot.
Bootmgr is compressed, LOL!
I will give that another try, one folder at a time on this machine.
I'm sorry I don't have benchmarks to back up the any claim... I'm just too
lazy to do one and I can't seem to find a free storage benchmark program
that I like. Actually I don't really care, I just like this setup, it
works for me. People have a hard time keeping the computer up and running
as it is, they don't really need another factor to complicate their setup.
Gnu Image Manipulation Program 2.6.6 takes the longest time to start for me
on this machine. Used to take over 10sec, now 4.33sec on a stopwatch.
Not very scientific but there you go.
Pegasus [MVP]
>
> OK very last post on this subject... hopefully.
>
> I'm sorry I don't have benchmarks to back up the any claim... I'm just too
> lazy to do one and I can't seem to find a free storage benchmark program
> that I like. Actually I don't really care, I just like this setup, it
> works for me.
>
> Not very scientific but there you go.
In other words: You like the slow-down you designed for your machine and you
insist telling everyone about it, dressing it up as the greatest thing since
sliced bread. Do you really expect anyone to believe your claims when, by
your own admission, you're too lazy to verify them?
John John - MVP
> ... People have a hard time keeping the computer up
> and running as it is, they don't really need another factor to
> complicate their setup.
Exactly. All the more reason why they shouldn't bother with your
"performance tweaks".
John
Tae Song
I thought up a better way to illustrate my point, so I didn't resist posting
this... shame on me.
When loading an application, Windows reads files from the hard drive into
memory while creating temp files. That's read throughput (hard drive) +
write throughput (USB drive) is greater than the throughput of hard drive
alone. It's not a competition about which drive is faster. And read and
write operations described previously can occur side-by-side, where as on
the hard drive read and write would have to be queued.
(Temp files on flash drive)
USB ++++*
HD ----------
(Temp files on hard drive)
USB
HD --o++-------
o = overhead for extra seeks associated with having the temp files on the
hard drive.
* I put in an extra ++ for temp files on flash drive since writes are slower
and also to illustrate why it doesn't matter.
I did think up of what I thought was the best way to benchmark and
illustrate the performance difference. It requires the setup of identical
hardware to isolate any variables down to just the temp file locations. It
would be preferable to have one set of input devices for both computers so
they are getting the same input at the same time. But I just don't have
that kind of money.
Anyways, even if I did tons of benchmarks on MY hardware. It doesn't mean
you will get the same results on YOUR hardware. You will just have to test
out the idea for yourself, unless you don't want to find out on your own.
Pegasus [MVP]
What you describe is some general consideration about a benchmark test. It
is not a step-by-step recipe that anyone can test on his own machine to
verify your claims. To stand up to scrutiny, your test would need to consist
of a detailed set of precise instructions. Let's see them!
Curious
"Temp" files on any drive when loading an application. If you run Excel it
loads excel.exe in memory and then loads or creates a new .xls spreadsheet
file in memory there are no other/temp files created.
"Tae Song" <tae_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:211A8696-08B6-4E4F...@microsoft.com...
Gordon
"Curious" <spam...@nomail.com> wrote in message
news:epDLNUC7...@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
> I have never seen any evidence or even ever heard of Windows creating any
> "Temp" files on any drive when loading an application. If you run Excel
> it loads excel.exe in memory and then loads or creates a new .xls
> spreadsheet file in memory there are no other/temp files created.
If you open a Word Document, Word will create a temp copy of the file in the
same folder that the original document exists. That's one of the main
reasons why users are advised NOT to open Word documents direct from
removable media....
--
Asking a question?
Please tell us the version of the application you are asking about,
your OS, Service Pack level
and the FULL contents of any error message(s)
Curious
versions of their own documents when you start editing them. But it is the
application program(Word) creating them and not Windows itself as Tae Song
claimed.
"Gordon" <gordon...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:ue7qglD7...@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
Gord Dibben
A temp file is created for each workbook opened.
When the workbook is closed the temp file is deleted.............most
times<g>
With a workbook open browse to
C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Microsoft\Excel
You will find an ~123x456.xar file
Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP
On Sat, 13 Jun 2009 16:12:34 +0100, "Gordon" <gordon...@yahoo.com>
wrote:
Curious
what happens with any Windows based application since the Office
applications themselves create temp files as you describe.
"Gord Dibben" <gorddibbATshawDOTca> wrote in message
news:skh735p5rnrcbgnlo...@4ax.com...
Patrick Keenan
Reducing the size of the writes won't affect the time it takes and certainly
will not alter the fact that Flash technology has a limited number of write
cycles. If you're using it as a temp drive, you are ensuring that a flash
drive will fail *sooner* rather than later.
Flash drives aren't appropriate for filesystem utility use. They can only
be relied on for convenient transfer of data that exists elsewhere.