USB copy problem.

[J]

On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 11:33, Aristotelis <agliak at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello, i am using ubuntu 10.04 x86_64. I'm having a certain problem
> while copying from my internal HDD (ext4) to usb stick (fat32). At first
> I get a good speed for the first half of the file (approx. 1.5 GB) and
> then it slows down but not significantly or in an annoying way...
> The actual problem and my question is that when file transfer window
> informs me that 1.5GB/1.5GB have been transfered and 0 seconds remain,
> the window remains there for about 30 seconds. I also realized that when
> copying multiple files, copying is stalled after each file being copied.
> System is fully functional during this time but it seems to me that a
> task is being done that won't let me safely remove my usb stick when i
> try to.
> Any help or information would be appreciated! Thanks in advance!

Most likely normal... you are transferring a 1.5GB file, after all...

when you copy or move a file onto that USB disk, you aren't writing
directly to the disk, you're writing to a buffer that then gets
written to disk, so in reality, most of the time, when that transfer
window says 1.5 of 1.5 copied and 0 seconds remaining, the hardware is
STILL writing the file to the USB device, even though the software has
finished what it was doing.

The amount of time this can take varies on many things, including the
write speed of the USB stick, the speed of the port (USB1.1 v USB
2.0), how much stuff is running on your system (writing files uses up
some processor time) the amount of other things going on on the USB
bus, etc...

So yeah, for a 1.5GB file, that sounds about right.