Vista 64Bit HP(Home Premium) - Formatting a 8GB pen drive | The Coffeehouse

Raghavendra_Mudugal
This is how it feels when you do not upgrade to the latest technology...

Hy;

I not sure is this why because of 64-bit?

Yesterday I formatted 8GB Kingston pen-drive, it took more than 15+ minutes.... (normal format, not quick format). I formatted the same pen drive in XP(32bit), it just did in with 3 seconds. I repeated this step again in vista-64bit-HP; it again took more than 15 minutes....

No idea.

CannotResolveSymbol
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Are you sure you did a full format in XP? A full format has to zero every byte on the drive; there's no way that happened in 3 seconds (flash drive sequential write performance isn't that good).

Raghavendra_Mudugal
This is how it feels when you do not upgrade to the latest technology...

In reply to CannotResolveSymbol

#Mar 23rd @ 7:39 AM

I tried it in XP again... its just does in a flash and message box appears... format completed. If i format the formatted pen drive on Vista.. its sames... 15+

sequential write performance.... will be slow if the drive contains data so it goes to each location and does... but the drive is empty contains not even a single byte... so basically FAT is empty.

AndyC

In reply to Raghavendra_Mudugal

#Mar 23rd @ 7:49 AM

May be a driver issue, it's possible the XP driver is taking a shortcut and just blanking the FAT wheras the Vista one is doing a full rewrite for some reason.

Dr Herbie
Horses for courses

In reply to AndyC

#Mar 23rd @ 8:33 AM

Isn't there a setting somewhere for preventing write-caching? It might be that XP is caching the write to the USB drive (so when it says it has finished, it's lying!). I know that in Vista you can switch this off (of course I can't remember wheren this setting is ...)

Herbie

AndyC

In reply to Dr Herbie

#Mar 23rd @ 8:36 AM

Of course there is a setting. However some, slightly naughty, drivers completely ignore it and cache the write anyway so that they always look fast in benchmarks.