Slow Tranfer Speed with USB 2.0 flash drive

I forgot to add I also have a 250 gig SATA Maxtor HD

PC usb
Nov/2005 problems -- USB very slow on new PC AMD 2.2 from CISNET using Windows XP Home SP2 (Service Pack 2)
Solution -
Format USB Flash Drive with NTFS file system -- select drive right click select properties
select Hardware Tab highlight appropriate Flash Drive select properties button select Policies tab,
ensure "Optimize For Performance" is selected OK OK select drive
right click select "format"
a drop down menu will appear with several fields to choose from "Capacity" ensure full space is utilized
"File System" select NTFS "Allocation Unit Size" select either "2048" or "4096"
Ensure that in "Format Options" you DO NOT Select "Quick Format" nor "Enable Compression" as this will add extra
workload overhead to flash drive slowing it down Select "Start" formatting will run

This speeded up my Flash drive. Later on problem came back. I bought an inexpensive "Self Powered 4 Port USB 2.0 HUB"
Important that it be certified as able to operate USB HIGH SPEED devices. Some PC internal USB ports lack sufficient power to
properly operate USB HIGH SPEED devices.

Second problem I was finally able to spot -- connecting external USB Hub to each internal USB port (one at a time)
and copy data to Flash Drive - use stop watch on each port using identical data.
Only on 1 internal USB port I got a message from Windows XP that "this port is not USB high speed capable".

So when I stopped using this 1 internal USB port problem was finally totally gone.
If still a problem - another solution is to use Windows XP to ZIP (compress) Folder - the data you wish to copy onto the
Flash Drive. I found this also greatly helps.

Hope this helps readers.

Remember problem with slow data writing on Flash Drives can also be a conflict with CDRW / DVDRW burner software
or with anti virus software. For other ideas try reading the Flash Drive Manufacturer website.

Good luck.