I recently bought a 16GB USB Flash drive, with the intention of running my desktop from it. I moved all my files over, set up my Thunderbird profile, etc etc etc…and then found it almost unusable as the data transfer speed was appallingly slow 🙁

Following all these steps did the trick under Windows XP:

1. Right click on the USB drive and select properties
2. Select the Hardware tab
3. Under All Disk Drives, highlight your USB drive and select Properties
4. Select the Policies tab and select Optimize for performance.
5. Press OK twice, and your transfer speeds should increase dramatically

Note that when your drive is optimized for performance you’ll need to use the Safely Remove Hardware icon in the taskbar to eject the drive – otherwise you’ll risk corrupting your data by just removing the drive from the port.

I now happily unplug my thumbdrive from one laptop and into another 🙂

Hmm, perhaps I should write a post on running your desktop from a flash drive. Most important point is of course to back up that flash drive every single day…