More than 15 years ago, Apple introduced System 7. It was an unprecedented operating system, compared with its predecessor System 6.0.8, that came with many new software features. One of them is RAM Disk. RAM Disk allows the user to create a volatile, virtual disk where you can store data. Mac OS X doesn’t support RAM Disk. But there are several freeware/shareware solutions for creating RAM Disk under OS X. One advantage of using a virtual disk is its fast Read/Write speeds. One major disadvantage is… Of course, it’s volatile. If a Mac suffers a sudden system error, you can lose entire data stored in a virtual disk.

If you don’t want to allocate a small share of fast, random access memory, there’s a different way of creating a virtual disk at low cost. How about using a USB memory stick? Prices for USB memory sticks are quite affordable these days. You can find a 16-GB USB memory stick for $50 to 60. And we purchased A-DATA USB Flash Drive PD9. In fact, it’s our first experience in using a USB memory stick. And our initial, innocent questions were

1. Are Read/Write speeds different, depending on whether you use it with USB 1.1 or 2.0?
2. Does the disk format matter when it comes to the Write speed?

One major reason why we wanted to test a USB memory stick is to find a good data storage medium for swapping data between Mac OS and Windows through Boot Camp. And the USB memory stick can be a good candidate because its memory is not volatile. And many USB memory sticks are compatible with both Mac OS and Windows without an additional hardware driver.  Continue reading →