On Tue, Jul 15, 2014 at 10:44 AM, Paul Robert Marino
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I have a question about your test did you unmount the stick between
> runs of rsync. if not you may have already had all of the information
> about the filesystem cached in memory instead of having to search the
> FAT table for information. this could have a huge effect on the speed
> of an update.

Good suggestion, although I would recommend instead:

    /sbin/sysctl -w vm.drop_caches=3

This will flush the page cache completely and avoid the need to
unmount+remount. It will also drop cached data for all mounted
partitions (in this case, both the source and the destination of the
rsync), which is usually what you want before performing any benchmark
involving the file system.

 - Pat