Slow USB thumb (flash) drive

[cmteng]

Hi!

I make my own USB thumb drive with a 128 memory stick and a memory stick reader. The memory stick is using FAT 16 File System. I'm running Mac OS X 10.2.4. I was hoping to use it to backup important files when I'm not using the memory stick for my digital camera.

I use to get 500K per second of trasfer rate for the memory stick but today after I reformat using Window XP  (still fat 16) and insert back to my Mac. The trasfer become way tooooo slow. I think I'm getting less than 100K per second.

I'm wondering does anyone experience the same thing?

Any idea how to solve it?

Thanks!

Chou Ming

[tacit]

Reading from and writing to any FAT16 volume is slow. Making matters worse, the FAT16 file system can not handle Mac files with resource forks. If you copy a Mac-specific file to a FAT16 volume, the resource fork will be removed, destroying the file.

I do not recommend using DOS-formatted media to back up  Mac files.

[cmteng]

Thanks for the reply.

I'm sure the memory stick use to transfer faster. Yesterday I tried to copy find to another memory stick. I was getting about 500k per second. I wonder why....