Slow USB drive file deletion?

[philipraybrown]

I have noticed that when I delete a large amount of files on my
Microcenter USB drive, it takes about 100 minutes. This seems strange
since all it needs to do is change the entries in the FAT 32
directory. This is the same amount of time that it takes me to COPY
the file on to the drive. It is like the deletion procedure actually
spend time going out to all the "sectors" (sic) of the USB drive and
copies over them. Does anyone know why it takes so long to delete a
large number of files on USB?

Philip

 

[Trimble]

If your using Windows XP check the drives properties ..
The default setting is for 'removeability' rather than 'performance'
Performance setting can be 5 times faster on writes
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[Mike Walsh]

I have found that the "performance" setting (write cache enabled) improves performance when reading or writing large files; but for most other things e.g. working with a lot of small files, searching, deleting directories etc., performance is better with write cache disabled.