An update published by Microsoft a few months ago for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 RC2 allows to increase the data transfer speed on a USB stick or external drives . The update kb2581464 is documented by a Microsoft page in Italian where, it should be specified, it should be noted that a complete test has not been performed on the hotfix therefore Microsoft declines all responsibility and recommends installing it only in case of problems.
Reading the article, in the first lines, it is however clearly written that this hotfix introduces a new feature and is not related to an error to be corrected; for this reason it is worth applying it to improve the speed of USB sticks and external hard drives .
The Hotfix increases the maximum transfer size from 64Kbyte to 2MB.
This change, only for Windows 7 and Windows Server, should theoretically improve the performance of peripherals connected to the computer via USB cable.
The actual result will only be evident for some types of fast peripherals while it may not give any benefit on older and slower USB flash drives.
To apply the update, you must request it on this page where you must enter your email address to receive the download link.
The patch can currently be downloaded directly from this address
//hotfixv4.microsoft.com/Windows%207/Windows%20Server2008%20R2%20SP1/sp2/Fix373164/7600/free/435479_intl_i386_zip.exe
After downloading the file, after extracting it and installing it, before restarting the computer, you need to do a little operation on the registry.
- From the Start menu, type in the search box " RegEdit " and press Enter to open the registry editor.
- From the left tree, navigate following the following path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ usbstor .
Create a new key under that folder by giving it the name VVVVPPPP
- Click on the new key and, in the space on the right, create a new DWORD value with the name MaximumTransferLength and give it as a decimal value: 2097120 .
If you want to apply the change immediately, you can download the already modified key from here.
To install a new key, just double click on the .reg file.
- Restart your computer.
Before making the change it might be interesting to measure the data transfer speed via USB before and after to see if something has changed.
