# Can I run a PC faster off a thumb drive? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 3, 2012, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-run-a-pc-faster-off-a-thumb-drive/633596 "2012-09-03T23:59:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2012, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-run-a-pc-faster-off-a-thumb-drive/633596/1 "2012-09-03T23:59:31Z")
Browsing though the electronics store the other day, I was surprised to see a 128 GB thumb drive. What!?! Seems like an awfully big capacity for a thumb drive to me. I wondered if one could load their OS onto a thumb drive and boot from it. Solid state memory is pretty fast, but maybe accessing it through an external USB port slows it down enough to make it not worth it? I don’t have the knowledge to answer the question. Thumb drives now have the capacity of a SSD. Are thumb drives effectively equivalent to SSDs then? ---
**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2012, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-run-a-pc-faster-off-a-thumb-drive/633596/2 "2012-09-04T00:13:13Z")
no. SSDs get their reputation for speed from two things- the low latency of reading from flash memory, and the bandwidth they get from striping data across multiple channels of flash chips. Your 128 GB flash drive will still probably win in latency compared to hard disk drives; but it’ll absolutely be bottlenecked by the USB interface and the fact that it probably has a single-channel flash controller. ---
**Author:** ![Heracles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heracles/32/487_2.png) [@Heracles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heracles)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2012, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-run-a-pc-faster-off-a-thumb-drive/633596/3 "2012-09-04T03:43:38Z")
However, even though “Hi-speed” USB is slower than a hard drive interface, the thumb drive has no moving parts. So for some types of random access, it can be faster. Windows Vista and 7 can use some thumb drives as cache memory: see [ReadyBoost](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReadyBoost). ---
**Author:** ![AaronX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7bcc69/32.png) [@AaronX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AaronX)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2012, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-run-a-pc-faster-off-a-thumb-drive/633596/4 "2012-09-04T04:00:57Z")
SSDs read/write at above 400MB/s (I think that’s bytes), “fast” (class 10) SD cards write at below 20MB/s. ---
**Author:** ![DWMarch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dwmarch/32/1010_2.png) [@DWMarch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DWMarch)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2012, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-run-a-pc-faster-off-a-thumb-drive/633596/5 "2012-09-04T05:17:13Z")
It doesn’t run faster but it runs: > **[ITPro Today: IT News, How-Tos, Trends, Case Studies, Career Tips, More](https://www.itprotoday.com)** > > IT Pro Today Homepage ---
**Author:** ![AnalogSignal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/analogsignal/32/1085_2.png) [@AnalogSignal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AnalogSignal)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2012, 6:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-run-a-pc-faster-off-a-thumb-drive/633596/6 "2012-09-04T06:29:05Z")
You could boot something like [Puppy Linux](http://puppylinux.org/) off a thumb drive. It runs very fast because the entire operating system resides in memory. ---
**Author:** ![control-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@control-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/control-z)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2012, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-run-a-pc-faster-off-a-thumb-drive/633596/7 "2012-09-04T19:20:20Z")
A USB flash drive can very quickly access one small file out of thousands of other small files. But due to USB speed limitations, for sustained transfer speed with larger files it’s slower than a regular hard drive. There is a thing in Windows Vista and 7 called [ReadyBoost](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReadyBoost) that can use a USB flash drive to speed up certain disc accesses. Seems to work best for computers with not much RAM, otherwise RAM could be used for disc cache. RAM speed is faster than any sort of permanent storage device. You’d be better off buying more RAM or a solid state hard drive (SSD.) A SSD is basically a big flash drive with a hard disk (fast) interface. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2012, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-run-a-pc-faster-off-a-thumb-drive/633596/8 "2012-09-05T22:24:11Z")
Yeah, my latest computer has a solid state drive and boots really fast. It is only 128 GB though, so if I were downloading movies or something, I would probably get one of those 128 GB USB drives. It happened I saw one the other day and was amazed how small it was. ---
**Author:** ![Gagundathar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a183cd/32.png) [@Gagundathar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gagundathar)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2012, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-run-a-pc-faster-off-a-thumb-drive/633596/9 "2012-09-05T22:31:57Z")
[Some specs here for the Sandisk.](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/storage/sandisks-latest-flash-drives-offer-128gb-usb-3-0-and-more/1709) > [@](#): > > The 128GB version of the drive will run for $249 when it becomes available in the third quarter of this year. Sandisk says this is the highest capacity Flash drive it offers, though, sadly, its only available with USB 2.0. I think I’d rather have an SSD. But, oh my goodness, the idea of carrying 128 billion bytes of data in my pocket? That is pretty dang cool. ---
**Author:** ![Rachellelogram](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rachellelogram/32/8689_2.png) [@Rachellelogram](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rachellelogram)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2012, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-run-a-pc-faster-off-a-thumb-drive/633596/10 "2012-09-05T23:37:07Z")
> [@Gagundathar](#): > > [Some specs here for the Sandisk.](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/storage/sandisks-latest-flash-drives-offer-128gb-usb-3-0-and-more/1709) > > I think I’d rather have an SSD. > > But, oh my goodness, the idea of carrying 128 billion bytes of data in my pocket? > That is pretty dang cool. Yeah I was going to say, the portability is why it’s so expensive. Until they can shrink SSDs to the size of a keychain bobble and allow us to carry them in our pockets, it’s just not the same! ---
**Author:** ![AaronX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7bcc69/32.png) [@AaronX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AaronX)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2012, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-run-a-pc-faster-off-a-thumb-drive/633596/11 "2012-09-06T00:17:11Z")
$249? That’s almost twice the price of a 128 GB SSD. ---
**Author:** ![Fubaya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c2a13f/32.png) [@Fubaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fubaya)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2012, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-run-a-pc-faster-off-a-thumb-drive/633596/12 "2012-09-06T01:56:44Z")
> [@Gagundathar](#): > > But, oh my goodness, the idea of carrying 128 billion bytes of data in my pocket? > That is pretty dang cool. You could get [two](http://www.google.com/products/catalog?num=20&hl=en&newwindow=1&safe=off&q=64gb+flash+drive&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=15347667287299863786&sa=X&ei=uf9HUPKaO4Wg9QT5r4GYBA&ved=0CJsBEPMCMAA) 64GB flash drives for less than $40. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Colossus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.colossus/32/9423_2.png) [@Dr.Colossus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Colossus)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2012, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-run-a-pc-faster-off-a-thumb-drive/633596/13 "2012-09-06T02:10:10Z")
> [@Heracles](#): > > However, even though “Hi-speed” USB is slower than a hard drive interface, the thumb drive has no moving parts. So for some types of random access, it can be faster. Windows Vista and 7 can use some thumb drives as cache memory: see [ReadyBoost](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReadyBoost). i have kind of bad luck w electronics. i have had several external backups fail and in a few cases lost data forever (i know magic can probably get it back, but in all practical forms, to me, it’s lost). i have been looking into getting either a solid state or one of those heavy duty jacketed externals. but your post makes me wonder: are thumbdrives a good solution for backing up data? they are small and can be placed in a safe place, can deal with being jostled and moved or dropped… is that a good idea? ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2012, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-run-a-pc-faster-off-a-thumb-drive/633596/14 "2012-09-06T14:15:42Z")
For backing up things I personally think they’re great. Plug it in, pull it, toss it in a drawer and you’re done. I haven’t played with them long enough to find out if they deteriorate over time or something, but so far no trouble. For some reason, out of all the cool things to look at in the world of computer science, a 128GB thumb drive just strikes me as especially ‘Star Trek’. I don’t know why it is so especially amazing. And thanks as always for the answers guys!