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I recently bought a Patriot Xporter XT Boost 8GB Flash Drive whish is supposed to be one of the faster flash drives but it seems extremelly slow. For isntance Firefox takes several minutes to load. Are there any tips or tricks to making it run faster? NTFS vs FAT32? Any registry settings or options in device manager?

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I'm pretty sure I found the answer. I found a site that had benchmarks comparing FAT32 and NTFS. Once I reformatted the drive to FAT32 is seems to be a lot faster. If someone wants to answer with format to FAT32 I'll accept that as an answer. – Luminose Mar 23 '10 at 17:36
It's allowed and encouraged to answer and accept your own questions if you find the answer your self. (no 15 points rep gain though and you have to wait a day before you can mark it as correct) – Nifle Mar 24 '10 at 0:17
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I found a site that benchmarked the difference between FAT32, NTFS, and exFAT on a flash drive. They found that FAT32 was much faster than NTFS. Once I reformatted my drive to FAT32 most speed issues went away. I did not do exFAT because my PC at work is XP and there seem to be issues.

USB Flash Drive Comparison part 2 – FAT32 vs NTFS vs ExFAT

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How are you connecting it to your computer?

If its a desktop and you are connecting to a hub or a front panel port then try connecting it to one of the USB ports directly on the motherboard back plate.

Also, is your computer an old one? Does it support USB 2.0 or is it old enough to be only 1.1?

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I am connecting it to the front. This is a work computer which is the newest Optiplex they make so I know the computer is USB 2.0. I'll try connecting it to the back. – Luminose Mar 23 '10 at 15:23
Also, how many (and what kind of) devices are using the same bus? The ~400 MB/s that's quoted for USB 2.0 throughput is the maximum combined value. Note that different ports on the MB may be sharing a bus. – Chris Nava Mar 23 '10 at 16:25
A mouse, keyboard, and an iPhone. I don't even use the computer to sync the iPhone, just for charging. Bandwidth shouldn't be an issue. – Luminose Mar 23 '10 at 16:29
I'd try plugging it into the back panel. The front panel has (sometimes long) cables leading it to the motherboard which could create enough noise to substantially decrease the bandwidth.. – Earlz Mar 23 '10 at 16:35
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You don't say your O/S, but XP/Vista/Win7 will warn you if you plug a USB2.0 device into a USB1/1.1 port. – CodeByMoonlight Mar 23 '10 at 17:12
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