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Questions tagged [speed]

Questions about optimizing your computer to take up less boot time, application launch time, download time, etc.

788 questions
135
votes
12 answers

If RAM is cheap, why don't we load everything to RAM and run it from there?

RAM is cheap, and much faster than SSDs. It's just volatile. So why don't computers have a LOT of RAM, and on power up, load everything to the RAM from the hard drive/SSD and just run everything from there, assuming there's no real need to persist…
pkr
  • 1,267
126
votes
7 answers

How do I speed up a video by 60X in ffmpeg?

I found this example ffmpeg -i input.mkv -filter:v "setpts=0.5*PTS" output.mkv but I have a video I want to speed up by 60 times, not just 2X.
watercollider
  • 1,362
104
votes
12 answers

What's the maximum speed possible with a USB2.0 drive?

USB 2.0 supports 60MB/s (480Mb/s) transfers. I'm only getting 30MB/s between my computer and a USB drive. Therefore, I'm only getting half the rated speed. What causes the significant difference between the two numbers?
Billy ONeal
  • 8,421
61
votes
4 answers

Make 7-Zip extract an archive directly to a directory

Whenever I extract an archive using 7-Zip, it performs a two step operation. First it extracts the contents of the archives to a temporary folder, then Windows copies the files from the temporary folder to the target directory. The second part of…
JamesGecko
  • 2,120
56
votes
4 answers

What is the actual speed of SATA 3?

Google says it is running at 6Gb/s. The throughput is at 600MB/s. 600MB/s equals 4.8Gb/s. Does this mean that the bandwidth is 6Gb/s but the actual throughput is 4.8Gb/s ?
Space Ghost
  • 1,113
53
votes
7 answers

Is an HDD overwritten with zeroes faster?

I had a PC with two OSs installed, which hard drive I erased using Disks from UbuntuUSB. I chose quick erase. As I understand, it deleted partition table, but all files' ones and zeroes are still on the HDD. I then created new partition table, and…
Danyl Filatov
  • 631
50
votes
7 answers

How to make 7-Zip faster

I normally use WinRAR over 7-Zip simply because it's faster and only a little less efficient with compression. I did a few tests on different file types and sizes comparing the 7-Zip and WinRAR default settings on their normal compression and their…
Kefka
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47
votes
3 answers

Why is my HDD so slow on the "4K" speed tests?

What is wrong with my speed at 4K? Why is it so slow? Or is it supposed to be like that? Is that speed okay? Why do I have such low speed at 4K?
User6539
  • 469
43
votes
4 answers

Do USB or PS/2 keyboards respond faster?

Do USB or PS/2 keyboards respond faster in terms of end-to-end input latency, keystrike to character appearing on the screen? Related: Under either connection, is the time between keystrike to character appearing long enough to be perceptible? Under…
Aidan Ryan
  • 1,546
40
votes
13 answers

How long would it take to transfer 1TB over USB 2.0?

This might be a completely stupid question because it is conceivably highly dependent on the respective disk speeds. But I am thinking that there is a speed cap that is specific to USB 2.0 that would by itself define a lower limit. How long would it…
Ron Tuffin
  • 2,510
40
votes
4 answers

Quickly Empty Trash in Mac OS X

Emptying the trash in OS X can be a long process, especially If you have lots of items (like me). This is after 5 minutes: Is there a way to quickly empty the trash, or make the process a whole lot quicker?
Josh Hunt
  • 21,369
37
votes
4 answers

Why do HDDs mostly have the same speed as 5400, 7200, 10000 RPM?

Why do hard disk drives mostly have the same speed? They are mostly 5400, 7200, 10000 RPM. Why not 6000 or 8000? Is there any reason or benefit for having those speeds?
Simon Verbeke
  • 3,753
37
votes
6 answers

Can Internet speed decrease the further away a certain (server in a) country is from you?

Is there a general rule of thumb, per how many thousands km your Internet speed can naturally decrease and by how much? Something like "10 Mbit/s per 1000 km". (I've got from this SE answer that this might indeed be the case). However, I'm living…
mohnstrudel
  • 473
34
votes
12 answers

Do harddrives slow down with age?

My (windows based) laptop is coming up to six years old now, and it still has semi respectable specs - Core 2 Duo 2.6ghz, 1gb Ram, 500gb HDD, 256mb ATI graphics card. Although the hardware is on its last legs, I am quite proficient with XP and…
danixd
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33
votes
4 answers

Do disabled Firefox extensions make Firefox slower?

Do disabled Firefox extensions make Firefox slower? I know that extensions make browsing slower, but what about extensions that are disabled and not in use?
inothemo
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