XP Registry Edits for Flash-Friendly Disaster Recovery
Source: Tom's Guide US | Keywords: eSATA,, USB,, Flash | Themes: Business
- 1. An eSATA Flash Drive Market is Born
- 2. Getting the Most Out of a Flash Drive
- 3. eSATA Flash Drives For Disaster Recovery
- 4. XP Registry Edits for Flash-Friendly Disaster Recovery
- 5. eSATA Flash Drive Specification Table
- 6. Kanguru e-Flash
4. XP Registry Edits for Flash-Friendly Disaster Recovery
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters]
"EnablePrefetcher"=dword:00000000
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOpt imizeFunction]
"Enable"="N"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\OptimalLayout]
"EnableAutoLayout"=dword:00000000
Then you want to disable XP’s Hibernate feature by completing the following tasks:
1. Click Start then Control Panel.
2. Click Power Options.
3. Select Hibernate tab.
4. Uncheck the Enable Hibernate checkbox.
5. Click Okay.
By disabling the system hibernate feature, you will avoid the hibernate file created by Windows XP. You will not only free up space, but also avoid the file writing associated with the hibernate file. Then you will want to turn off the system restore by completing these tasks from the Microsoft Website.
1. Click Start, right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.
2. In the System Properties dialog box, click the System Restore tab.
3. Click to select the Turn Off System Restore check box. Or, click to select the Turn Off System Restore on All Drives check box.
4. Click Okay.
5. When you receive the message asking about system restore, click Yes to confirm that you want to turn off System Restore:
After a few moments, the System Properties dialog box closes.
This will extend the life of the drive by avoiding extra data writing and providing more storage space.
Then you will want to disable disk caching and manually delete the cached files. To do this, complete the following tasks from Microsoft’s Website.
1. Click Start, right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.
2. In the System Properties dialog box, click the Hardware tab.
3. Click on Device Manager.
4. Click to expand the Disk Drives option.
5. Double click on the eSATA flash drive.
6. Select the Policies tab.
7. Uncheck Enable write caching on the disk.
8. Click okay.
This avoids the write caching feature, which caches the file until it is confirmed as written. Again, this saves write cycles to the drive.
The next item may be useful to disable is XP’s “last accessed timestamp” feature.
Click Start, Run, and type cmd and then press the enter key:
Type the command: fsutil behavior set disablelastaccess 1, then press the enter key
This can be restored by changing the number 1 to 0. This might be needed for some backup programs or for program access as the last accessed property will not be updated
Disable the Indexing of the drive.
1. Click Start then Control Panel.
2. Click on Administrative Tools.
3. Click on Computer Management.
4. Expand Services and Application.
5. Right click on Indexing Service.
6. On the Generation tab uncheck Index files with unknown extensions.
7. Click OK.
If you have enough memory on your system, you could use memory for system cache and disable virtual memory.
1. Click Start, right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.
2. In the System Properties dialog box, click the Advanced tab.
3. Click on Performance Settings.
4. Click on Advanced.
5. Click on the System Cache Radio button in the Memory usage area.
6. Click on Virtual Memory’s Change button.
7. Select the No Paging file.
8. Click Okay.
- Previous page eSATA Flash Drives For Disaster Recovery
- Next page eSATA Flash Drive Specification Table
wait for usb 3.0
Sata IO(6.0Gb/s) is available this year. USB 3.0(4.8Gb/s) not ready til 2010
USB 3.0 is slated to support up to 4.8Gbps, eSATA supports up to 3.0Gbps now. SATA 6Gb/s is approved so that should also trickle down to eSATA. Since current USB suffers from a loss due to overhead of 25% the new 3.0 USB must be more effecient to compete with SATA 3 GB/s. It should also be noted that eSATA can support RAID and other HDD type features not available in USB devices. This could get interesting.
I doubt 3.0 will be able to compete. It still uses the host CPU for low level protocol processing, and thus, will never reach it's max bandwidth outside of the theoretical.
I doubt even USB 3.0 will be able to out preform even SATA 3 GB/s in real world testing.
Currently USB has a loss of about 25% due to overhead. If that loss continues then it would perform at 3.6 Gb/s. I think if eSATA flash and HDD if they can get powered eSATA ports in more than laptops, could really take off now and not wait until 2010 for USB 3.0.
Thanks for the article but why is it on Toms Guide and not Toms Hardware? Even your own charts use the Toms Hardware logo!
JeanLuc,
So sorry to confuse you! External USB (and, now, eSATA) thumb drives are definitely a Tom's Guide consumer electronics product. Apologies for the logo confusion.
Rachel Rosmarin
Editor of Tom's Guide
Even on USB, those drive put my drives to shame
Now if only they'd start selling them here!
I have a Throttle and for unknown reasons it DOES not run at 90mb/s on an exresscard esata setup. Tried several machines. All I could get is 40mb/s. Maybe esata from the MB would be faster. Need to try it.
Hey bobo0, I could not get the Throttle or other to 90MB/sec even with the internal SATA connector on a motherboard. I could get 75-80 very consistently on my laptops and desktops so do not be discouraged. Try disabling any power management on your laptop as I experienced much slower performance when power management was set to give the most battery life.
Not sure how 6.2 was obtained on Windows Experience rating, since the scale goes from 1.0 to 5.9:
http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/w [...] 61033.mspx
Not sure how 6.2 was obtained on Windows Experience rating, since the scale goes from 1.0 to 5.9:http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/w [...] 61033.mspx
if you had cared to read you're own link, you would have seen this:
6.2 was in Windows 7 and there is a screen shot of it shown. So obviously it does go higher now. Thanks for pointing that out.
I got a few pings on where to find the RiData unit. It is at
http://www.amazon.com/Ridata-RDESS [...] 469&sr=8-1
You can find the OCZ and Kanguru unit is at www.kanguru.com
Hey everyone, I wanted to let you know that Kanguru Solutions is working hard to resolve their issue and watch for them to rebound with a faster drive soon.
find another place to buy:
http://www.allstarshop.com/shop/pr [...] 25D2CQAAC9
For anyone interested, Kanguru system is releasing a new version of their flash drive. It will use a newer interface to speed up the read and write access of their drive. They are saying that the issue seen here was that they were first to market and had an older PCB that proved to be slower. Watch for this update.
Kanguru Solutions has updated their eSATA e-Flash drive as a direct result of our Tom’s Guide article.
As a direct result of our testing, Kanguru Solutions learned they were using an older version of the eSATA controller on the flash drive. This accounted for their slower performance during our test. They have corrected the issue and their performance is now equal to or greater than the other two drives. Testing using the eSATA interface showed random access went from 0.4 to 0.2 ms, average read went from 66.7 to a new high of 80.8 MB/sec, average write want from 48 to 52.6 MB/sec. This resolves all the issue with the eSATA e-Flash drive making it a top performer with the best package.