Linux

49017 readers

674 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
No misinformation
No NSFW content
No hate speech, bigotry, etc

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.ml

nooter692@lemmy.ml

MarcellusDrum@lemmy.ml

cypherpunks@lemmy.ml

cyclohexane@lemmy.ml

d3Xt3r@lemmy.nz

Why is copying to USB stick on Linux so damn slow? (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 days ago by WereCat@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml

46 comments fedilink hide all child comments

For context:

I'm copying the same files to the same USB drive for comparison from Windows and from my Fedora 41 Workstation.

Around 10k photos.

Windows PC: Dual Core AMD Athlon from 2009, 4GB RAM, old HDD, takes around 40min to copy the files to USB

Linux PC: 5800X3D, 64GB RAM, NVMe SSD, takes around 3h to copy the same files to the same USB stick

I've tried chagning from NTFS to exFAT but the same result. What can I do to improve this? It's really annoying.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] merthyr1831@lemmy.ml 2 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)

Depends on the distro and desktop environment but some will "transfer" files to a software buffer that doesn't actually write the data immediately. Works for limiting unnecessary writes on Flash memory but not USB sticks that are designed to be inserted and removed at short notice.

You can force Linux to commit pending writes using the 'sync' command. Note it won't give you any feedback until the operation is finished (multiple minutes for a thumbdrive writing GBs of data) so append & to your command ('sync &') to start it as its own process so you don't lock the terminal.

You can also watch the progress using the command form this Linux Stack Exchange Q;

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/48235/can-i-watch-the-progress-of-a-sync-operation#48245

Side question though, it seems that there are faster options. How come we don't use those in GUI file explorers if they're faster?

[–] WereCat@lemmy.world 1 points 19 hours ago

As I've already mentioned, sync does absolutely nothing. The copy took so long that the sync command exited 4 times while the files were still transfering and were nowhere near finishing. Regarding the watch -d grep -e Dirty: -e Writeback: /proc/meminfo command, I did not mention it in this thread but I did try it and yes, there was some almost 900k kB of data in the "Dirty" buffer that went up and down constantly even after I've disabled the caching.