0Accelerare Media Browser

Un articolo su Hack7MC ha attirato la mia attenzione un paio di mesi fa, ma sono appena riuscito a dargli seguito. L'idea è di velocizzare il plug-in Media Browser per Media Center spostando la sua libreria su Cheap USB Flash drive, che si spera offra prestazioni molto migliori rispetto ai normali dischi rigidi. La prima cosa che feci fu di prova un paio di dispositivi basati su memoria flash che ho contro il mio desktop HardDrive ...

WD Velo­ciRap­tor (300calesse)
ran­dom 4k read = 0.9mb/s
ran­dom 512k read = 57mb/s

Super Tal­ent Pico‑C 8Gig
ran­dom 4k read = 8.2mb/s
ran­dom 512kb read = 34.6mb/s

SanDisk Extreme III SDHC 8Gig
ran­dom 4k read = 4.6mb/s
ran­dom 512kb read = 20.45mb/s

–update
Cor­sair Flash Voy­ager 8Gb
ran­dom 4k read = 8.13mb/s
ran­dom 512kb read = 30.41mb/s

I have been led to under­stand that the 4k meas­ure­ments are the most import­ant val­ues, how­ever I would like an explan­a­tion of why this is the case.

The aver­age file size in my media browser image lib­rary is ~42kb so they are rel­at­ively small files, che credo sia rilevante

For com­par­is­on of a lot more pen drives there is a recent review (2009) a Ars Tech­nica

The cor­sair drive from the ars review is cur­rently on ebay for around £16 — I won­der how much of a per­form­ance increase it offers

–update

• The cor­sair drive from the ars review turned out to be frac­tion­ally slower (effect­ively on par with) the Pico‑C
• The aver­age files in my Media Browser lib­rary are now 610kb. They range from 5kb to 2mb.
• USB 2.0 is the­or­et­ic­ally lim­ited to 60mb/s, and in prac­tice seems lim­ited to 30mb/s
• Senza USB 3.0, or an intern­al (e.g. SATA) SSD I am skep­tic­al that any real­ist­ic speed-up can be gained with this meth­od. Using an SQL data­base for Media Browser may offer a sub­stan­tial speed up, and the data­base can eas­ily be hos­ted on a RAM drive for an addi­tion­al increase