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I noticed this in general: its faster to copy a large file from my computer to my USB than it is to overwrite it. For example, I have a file a.txt thats 10 gb. If my USB is blank and I copy my file to the USB, its pretty quick. However, if my USB already had an outdated version of a.txt and I want to put the new version on it by copying the new one from my computer and pasting it onto my USB, it overwrites the a.txt file. Why does that take longer to overwrite than if my USB was blank? Does it have to do with the number of calls to read/write?

Bill M
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1 Answers1

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Erasing is much slower than writing. Erasing followed by writing, slower still.

David Schwartz
  • 62,365