optimal settings for copying many small files to usb?

[patrickdrd]

I'm referring to this screen:
Image: https://i.imgur.com/td09q3Q.jpg

I often sync my "DATA" partition to usb external disk and/or usb flash drives, please tell me do I need to change these settings or use default for optimal many, millions maybe, small files?

also, how should I format the usb disk/flash drive in such a case?

thanks in advance

[ghisler(Author)]

No, don't change it. It uses Windows function CopyFileEx, which is the fastest when copying to USB sticks.

[patrickdrd]

ok, thanks, could you (or anyone with that knowledge) suggest best formating method for this case?

[vdijken]

When you mean by synchronisation that you copy your whole "data" section to a USB device, do a fast format with TC: right mouse on the device and choose formatting. Be sure to select the right device. When you don't feel safe; just select in the root all files and directories you recognize and delete them with SHIFT-F8. With f8 the files go to the recycling-bin and the space is not freed.

[HolgerK]

USB flash drive performance with a lot of small files is more a matter of the built in flash controller than formatting.
Some usb flash drives (at a higher price level) like SanDisk Extreme (Pro) do have a SSD like flash controller which offers excellent performance (also for small files).

Other possibility is to zip the files and copy the archive onto the usb-drive.

Regards
Holger

[patrickdrd]

ok, but this should be bad, shouldn't it?

Image: https://i.imgur.com/YKSwBE3.jpg

I mean faulty drive?

[HolgerK]

There is no info about the file size of the 314 files.

Lets assume you have 313 files @ 4kB size and one at nearly 20MB.

According to this table the maximum write speed (4kB blocksize) of very fast usb drives is about 32MBytes/s, but can fall for some drives below 0.01MByte/s (10kBytes/s) .

Lets further assume your drive is not the fastest: 313 files @ 4kByte -> transfer duration @ 10kByte/s : 125s (2m 5s).
This would correlate with your screenshot.

The mentioned sandisk extrem pro (old test from from 2013) would transfer these small files at a speed of 10MB/s -> 0.12 sec.
You see the difference (125s / 0.12s = x 1000!).
Nothing you will ever get with different formatting (may be +/- 10 percent difference).

Regards
Holger