I bought a new HP 32 GB USB stick. I plugged it into my Debian laptop to
make a quick back up of a large directory (~8 GB, lots of little files),
and it took overnight to transfer the files. Gnome reported that the
transfer speed was around 400 - 500 KB/sec. I then plugged the same stick
into the same port on my laptop, but transferred files (~1.5 GB lots of
little files) from Windows 7 running in VMPlayer, and got a transfer speed
of 4-5 MB/sec - 10 time faster! I checked the specs on the device, and HP
says it should r/w files at about 4-5 MB/sec. Is there some magic in
windows that makes USB sticks faster?

Thanks,

Mark