Database performance on a USB stick

I am considering distributing an application via a USB stick which will read and write to a h2 or other embedded database on the USB stick. Has anyone done anything simialr and how did you find the performance compares to installing the dat开发者_运维技巧abase to a local hard disk?

The USB stick should allow many more commits per second than a local hard disk. If the transfer rate is high enough for your application you should be fine. Just try it out.

One caveat: USB Sticks, like all flash memory, only support a certain number of writes before degrading and eventually failing. Try to estimate how many writes will occur during the whole lifetime of your application on a single stick.

You also have to consider whether your clients are going to be plugging this USB device into a USB 1.0, 1.1, 2.0 or 3.0 controller and whether the device is USB 1.0, 1.1, 2.0 or 3.0 compatible. USB 1.0 and 1.1 max out at 12Mbit/s transfer rate while USB 2.0 maxes at 480Mbit/s. Plugging a USB 2.0 memory stick into a USB 1.0 controller will make the memory stick run at the lower speed.

It should be fast enough for most read/write operations unless you are moving some seriously large amounts data back and forth.