How fast does your flash drive boot? (Survey)

[Koolkiwi]

I'm just about to consider licensing my unRAID flash drive to allow > 3 drives, but before I do I want to make sure I'm using a well performing flash drive, before I commit $119 worth of software license to it!

 

The 512MB USB Flash drive I am currently using is a cheapy, so I thought one way to determine how good (or bad) it is, is to compare boot up times with other users.

 

OK, so what I am asking you to do is:

 

1. Measure the image load time at bootup, from the "SysLinux" message appearing on your console screen, until the "Ready" message appears (after the images complete ... loading).

 

2. Post a reply, with your USB Flash brand and model, and the measured image load time.

 

Here's mine:

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HP USB 512MB Flash Drive (not sure on model, was a conference giveaway).

Image load time = 110 secs (1 minute 50 seconds).

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It seems to take ages when you are waiting for it, but when I tried booting from an old IDE hard drive the other day, the images loaded in just a few seconds! (But hard drives don't have GUID's to license).

 

Hopefully this information will help identify the fastest / best USB Drive to use for booting a server.

[Koolkiwi]

OK, I just bought a new "Lime" USB Flash drive, which boots in about 5 seconds.

 

Refer here:

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=613.0

 

So, now I understand why there have been no replies to this thread.  I'm guessing the old freebie USB drive I was using must have been USB1.0 only, resulting in the extremely slow 1 min 50 sec boot time (which obviously isn't what others are experiencing).

 

Apologies, but until I bought a new USB drive, I had no reference, and thought 1 min 50 secs to boot must have been normal!