USB thumb drives speeds

[crazycat]

I have found out something strange, i would use a USB thumb drive and i would see speeds of 15-20 MB/sec. After useing it for a few days it would drop to 4 MB/sec, now at this time i would get a new USB thumb drive and it will get speeds of 15-20 MB/sec. I have no idea why this happens, i am using a Kingston 4GB thumb drive.

Does anyone have the same problem?

 

[crazycat]

In simpler words, does yoru thumb drive gets slower after using it a lot?

 

[CanadaRAM]

With any conventional flash memory, writing to a never-used area of the memory is fast.

Changing existing data is slow however, because the Flash memory cannot simply change one bit, it must copy the whole block to RAM, change the one bit you want to change in RAM, erase the whole block, then write the whole block back to the Flash chip.

So WRITING is fast but CHANGING is slow. If you want your speed back, reformat the memory card/stick

For camera memory cards, make it a habit to copy your photos off your card to your computers hard drive, then reformat the card in the camera before starting your next shoot.

 

[sushi]

For camera memory cards, make it a habit to copy your photos off your card to your computers hard drive, then reformat the card in the camera before starting your next shoot.

Definitely good advice.

If I might add, be sure to make a back up of your photos to CD/DVD immediately as well.