Has anyone addressed the problem of max number of writes, though? Most modern OSes use virtual memory extensively. Having to cache the flash drive to prevent memory cell wear-out due to writes defeats the purpose of virtual memory, since you would need almost as much cache memory (I think) as the virtual memory size. Also, I thought that flash achieved its relatively high write speed by requiring block writes. So, in order to write 10 bytes you have to write a whole block, which may take milliseconds, but yields a high throughput because of the size of a block (EEPROM took milliseconds to write 1 byte, flash takes milliseconds to write several kilobytes, but neither can complete any size write operation in less than milliseconds). Am I wrong? Sean On 6/2/07, Tony Smith wrote: > > > USB 2.0 is faster than most LANs (480 vs 100Mbps). > > > > That's the raw data rate, not the actual throughput. I have > > done tests with USB2 (480kbps) and Firewire (400kbps), and > > the nominally faster USB2 takes longer to copy a given file > > than Firewire (all else being equal). > > > > And of course there's Gigabit ethernet - I have a Lacie > > "Ethernet Mini Disk" which has a gigabit interface and a USB2 > > interface too - I'll try the experiment both ways when I get > > some time. > > > Sure, there's always something faster, but that wasn't the point. > > In a lot of cases you could replace the hard drive in laptops with flash > (USB or not) and I doubt most people would even notice. They might notice > less noise, more battery life and sticker shock, but speed isn't high on the > list these days. > > I've worked for companies where everyone used laptops & WiFi, a USB 'hard > drive' will be faster than that. > > Tony > > -- > http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive > View/change your membership options at > http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist > -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist