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I recently bought new USB 3.0 flash drive (write speed: 110 MB/s, read speed: 190 MB/s). And I have Dell XPS 13 (it has SSD and USB 3.0).

My problem is speed of copying files to the USB flash stick.

When I formatted it to FAT32 or EXT2, EXT3, EXT4, the speed was around 100 MB/s. But with NTFS it's only around 20-30 MB/s.

But I don't think the problem is writing data to the USB stick. It seems the problem is reading from SSD when I'm copying files to the NTFS drive. Because when I look to the indicator-multiload, the read speed is around 30 MB/s, but the write is around 100 MB/s (see the graph: http://ubuntuone.com/3zHzUFfR9QGjeV62Qpq6va).

Another proof is simple program that I wrote in Java, which only read data from SSD and write them to USB stick. The speed with this program was also around 100 MB/s.

Does anybody know, how to improve native copying (cp command) to get the full speed with NTFS drive?

Thank you very much!

PS: I'm new Ubuntu user.

EDIT:

I test it now with 3.9 GB file:

CTRL+C/CTRL+V in Nautilus: 1:58 (34 MB/s)
Command "cp": 1:39 (40 MB/s)
Java program: 0:44 (90 MB/s)

EDIT 2:

If anyone wants to try it. Here is the program (for Java 7), that I used (source + compiled): http://ubuntuone.com/0KQgANrgN17izZm5fDPayJ

To test it, just cd to the bin folder and run:

java NtfsCopy source destination

or run:

java NtfsCopy

to see the usage.

share|improve this question
the actual performances of your USB devices depend on the a) BIOS b) OS/kernel c) driver d) filesystem . For NTFS it's natural to under-perform especially when compared to really new FS like ext4. – user1849534 Dec 25 '12 at 15:06
Well, but why is the Java program faster? – Iceman Dec 26 '12 at 16:16
I am getting interested too now. NTFS is indeed slower. – Dr_Bunsen Dec 26 '12 at 16:26
@Dr_Bunsen You can try the Java program, see my EDIT 2. – Iceman Dec 26 '12 at 20:33
@Iceman, nice piece of code there. I think I will use it the next time I have to transfer big stuff ;). Definitely something worth keeping. But for your question, I think it's really the difference in code, nothing more. Look up the source of Nautilus and cp. – Dr_Bunsen Dec 27 '12 at 11:01

1 Answer

up vote 1 down vote

You don't know whether the problem is reading from the SSD or writing to the USB. So, instead of copying SSD -> USB, try copying SSD -> Hard Drive -> USB.

share|improve this answer
I'm almost sure, the problem is reading from the SSD. Take a look here, this is graph from indicator-multiload: ubuntuone.com/3zHzUFfR9QGjeV62Qpq6va. Anyway I don't have HDD, I have only SSD. – Iceman Dec 27 '12 at 20:34

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