Friday, June 08, 2007

How fast is your thumb?

My beloved 128 MB Jump drive is lost. Stolen, actually. One of the things that i really liked about it was that the cap really sealed the stuff inside. It survived being left in a pocket and going through the wash. Twice.

My 512 MB Firefly was lost, so i had no thumb drive at all for several weeks. Well, not exactly. My iPod Shuffle is 512 MB (discontinued), and often has 100 MB free, and can be used to transfer arbitrary files too. But, I finally broke down and went to a store. My Jump drive cost something like $35 way back when, and being somewhat short on cash, i wasn't going to spend more than $20. I'd just have to get a small one. In a bin by checkout at MicroCenter, were 2 GB Kingston drives for $15.95. With tax, that's $16.90. So much for settling for a small one.

The Firefly turned up shortly thereafter. Both drives are in use. And something odd turned up. I downloaded interesting audio books from LibriVox, which turned out to be several gigabytes. The Kingston drive seemed to take quite a while to fill compared to the Firefly. Yet, transfer speed at home was much better.

At first, i thought that perhaps the computer at work had an older USB 1.0 interface. That's absurd, though. It's nearly three years younger than my computer at home. And, why would the FireFly be so much quicker? Well, the firefly is a quarter of the size, so maybe that's it. There's no way to get to the bottom of this without some measurements.

It turns out that i'm only writing data at work, and only reading it at home. And the Kingston is nearly nine times slower writing than reading. The Kingston is about 20% faster at reading than the Firefly. But the Firefly is only half as fast writing than reading. So, the Firefly is four times faster writing than the Kingston. And, since it's a quarter the size, filling it takes a 16th of the time.

OK, so the speed of the device is not listed anywhere. Would it be a deal breaker? No. It's quick enough, cheap, and has large tracks of land.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I had to giggle at the end comment "huge track of land" my husband and son are always saying that...couldn't sleep and just crusing around looking for something interesting to read. I am enjoying your site...have you ever gone to reasons.org

Stephen said...

reasons.org appears to be Creationist nonsense, perhaps not as bad as Intelligent Design, but with much the same sorts of arguments. Anti-evolution, non-science, putting a 'spin' on the evidence. This sort of thing is hurtful and evil. It's hurtful for example because not knowing how evolution works gives you incorrect ideas of how disease works, which can be fatal. Evil, because, in my opinion, it's developed and written by people who know better. Just because they don't accept a 6,000 year old Universe doesn't mean that they are more right than those who do.

Another way it's hurtful is that the analysis is easy to disprove. It's possible that people will use these arguments to support their faith. But building a house on sand is not a good idea. Much better to build your faith on other things. So i'd be happier if reasons.com talked about what Genesis really has to say, rather than what it doesn't have to say.

dahved said...

Isn't it really "tracts" of land?