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As we know, USB flash drives are generally very slow in data transfer rates. USB 3 has significantly increased the rates data transfers, but it's still much slower than even traditional mechanical HDDs - and many people still do not own the hardware to benefit from the new revision.
Also, compression/decompression slows down opening and saving files, but I would imagine that this is only true for I/O on an HDD/SSD/SSHD where the transfer rates are faster than the rates of a USB drive.
Is anyone aware of any performance tests that shows potential benefits from compressing an entire USB flash drive (particularly USB 2.0)? I would imagine that a computer's processor can decompress a file much faster than the USB can read an uncompressed file - so the larger the compression is on a USB - the less time it would take to read while the much faster processor can decompress a file quickly.
I would like to add a side note that I do not want to consider highly compressed media such as .jpg or encoded video where there will be little to no benefit from further compression. I am mostly talking about compression that would be in the range of 10%+ savings in disk space.
K.Dᴀᴠɪs
Posted 2018-01-21T14:54:16.843
Reputation: 396
I believe the answers to this question should also apply to yours. The distinction between a HDD and a (slower) USB flash drive isn't too significant here.
– Bob – 2018-01-21T15:31:39.783To that end, I am voting to close this question as a duplicate. If you believe it is not a duplicate, and that the USB flash drive case would lead to different answers, please edit your question so the question can be reopened. – Bob – 2018-01-21T15:33:03.397
You might also find the numbers provided in Performance Evaluation Of FileSystems Compression Features by Solomon Legesse useful.
– Bob – 2018-01-21T15:35:54.737@Bob I believe I can assert the answer from your link. Thank you for the reference. – K.Dᴀᴠɪs – 2018-01-21T15:38:36.040