Is a USB memory switch faster than an average SATA 300 concrete drive?

So let say you enjoy close to 500,000 small files (2-4Kb image thumbnails) on a server. You own a website that will display 200 or so thumbnails on one page and approximately 10,000 views of these page on any given day. So if you can do the math you feasible have several society at any one moment trying to load 200+ thumbnails.



Would moving these thumbnails to a usb memory push button offer a speed increase? Seek times on these flash memory sticks are incredibly efficient compared to SATA drives but then you're confined by the USB bus speed.



Opinions and experiences?

Is a USB memory switch faster than an average SATA 300 concrete drive?

With USB 2.0 the verbs speed is up to 480 MBps. ~

About 3 times the max speed of a HDD
Not sure about the speed, but I'm thinking this isn't such a flawless idea, since flash drives are volatile, and arent made for storage... They are made for transporting files from one place to another. People may argue next to me on this point, but I work in IT, and enjoy had rather a few mem sticks die on me... One during the 10th week of a 12 week semester at college.. oye! Learned my lesson the hard route. Stick with the SATA drives.
NO, a Hard Drive is other faster.



USB 2 supports 480mb/s theoretical throughput, sata is 300 consistant mb/s



NO flash drive runs at full USB 2 speeds, most write at about 10 or 11 mb/s and read at 20-40 mb



There is also the volatilitry issue, HDD MUCH better preference