Sticky problem

Q: I had always been under the impression that all USB sticks were of the same standard until I recently purchased a new 8GB stick. The new one, a different make from my other, performs much better speed wise, why would this be?

Another puzzle, although pleased with the transfer speed of the new stick I have found another problem when using it. The PC will not boot with the stick in place, however once it’s running I can insert the stick and all is well. Your expert advice on this would be greatly appreciated.

A: Depending on the age of your slower USB stick it may be that it’s USB 1.1, whereas the new one is likely to be USB 2.0. The difference in speed between the two standards is quite substantial, USB 1.1 operates at 12 Mbit/s whereas USB 2.0 can achieve a theoretical 480 Mbit/s. Although the newer standard was introduced in 2000 it took a while to become widely adopted and USB 1.1 devices were still on the market until relatively recently. A USB 2.0 capable PC will still support 1.1 devices at the slower rate. A diagnostic tool like SiSoft Sandra will allow you to check your USB speed.

Why the machine won’t boot with the flash drive connected is a bit more of a mystery. The first thing to do is check the boot sequence in the BIOS to be sure that the PC isn’t trying to boot from the USB device before the hard drive. If that’s not the case then it’s most likely that there’s a conflict with legacy USB support. You can try turning this off in the BIOS, but beware, if you have a USB keyboard and you turn off legacy support you won’t be able to get into the BIOS to change it back unless you have a PS/2 keyboard handy. On some systems you can disable USB legacy storage separately from the keyboard and mouse.

Current flash drives use the faster USB 2.0 standard