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USB stick transfer speed

J

john2006wright

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 25, 2007
204
0
UK
I have a 4GB Kingston usb stick and I have it formatted to MS-DOS (FAT32) so I can swap files between my Mac at home and PC at work. All works fine except when I put the files onto it from my Mac it takes soooo much longer than to do the same from my PC (similar specs with regard to CPU and Memory, if that makes a difference?). Why is it so slow copying files to it from my mac than from my PC? Is it because of the formating of the stick?

Thanks
John
 
Is theire another format I could use that would allow me to transfer files between my mac and PC. I use OS extended journaled for my back up hard drive but i dont think that would work on a pc?
 
Is it the Macbook in your sig? The first reason why transfer speeds would be slow is if you had it plugged into a USB 1 port instead of USB 2, but I presume your Macbook has all USB 2 ports. If you're not plugging it in directly, say through a hub, that may be at fault.

HFS+ formatted might be faster but the different shouldn't be dramatic and it wouldn't work with a PC without additional software.
 
yep its my sig macbook and its directly into the macbook, not via a hub.
Thanks for the reply, its really annoying how the PC is so much quicker and I don't know why.



apfhex said:
Is it the Macbook in your sig? The first reason why transfer speeds would be slow is if you had it plugged into a USB 1 port instead of USB 2, but I presume your Macbook has all USB 2 ports. If you're not plugging it in directly, say through a hub, that may be at fault.

HFS+ formatted might be faster but the different shouldn't be dramatic and it wouldn't work with a PC without additional software.
Click to expand...
 
john2006wright said:
I have a 4GB Kingston usb stick and I have it formatted to MS-DOS (FAT32) so I can swap files between my Mac at home and PC at work. All works fine except when I put the files onto it from my Mac it takes soooo much longer than to do the same from my PC (similar specs with regard to CPU and Memory, if that makes a difference?). Why is it so slow copying files to it from my mac than from my PC? Is it because of the formating of the stick?

Thanks
John
Click to expand...


I have an 8GB jump drive and (2) 2GB drives... yes both formatted MS-DOS (FAT32) as is yours, for same reasons... it does take quite a while for the drives to mount on the Macs I use on a daily basis (especially the 8GB one).

When plugged into a PC (at work) I hear that two-tone alert XP makes when it sees a new device...

No new info here (sorry) just confirmation of your original post.

But, now as I re-read your post, it seems you're questioning the copy speed.. my issue seems to be only with the mounting of the drive... copying data to the drive seems normal.
 
No problems with mount speed. Just copy speed. How long should it take to copy a 400Mb folder containing various word documents? My mac takes approx 5mins+. PC is approx 1min.

NB. These times are guesses, I will time them correclty when back at work.

nep61 said:
I have an 8GB jump drive and (2) 2GB drives... yes both formatted MS-DOS (FAT32) as is yours, for same reasons... it does take quite a while for the drives to mount on the Macs I use on a daily basis (especially the 8GB one).

When plugged into a PC (at work) I hear that two-tone alert XP makes when it sees a new device...

No new info here (sorry) just confirmation of your original post.

But, now as I re-read your post, it seems you're questioning the copy speed.. my issue seems to be only with the mounting of the drive... copying data to the drive seems normal.
Click to expand...
 
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