Improve grub4dos boot speeds by using the 0.4.6 USB driver

While experimenting with using dd under grub4dos to copy the contents of one large file to another large file on the same USB Flash drive, I found that if you use the built-in USB 2.0 driver in grub4dos 0.4.6a it is much quicker than just using the BIOSes driver (if using a USB 2.0 port).

e.g. Copying a 390MB file using the BIOS on an EeePC 904 took 104 seconds, but when the grub4dos USB driver was loaded it took just 23 seconds which was about the theoretical maximum for the USB Flash drive I was using (write speed was approx. 17MB/s max).

if you use the grub4dos 0.4.6 grldr file to replace your 0.4.5c grldr file, just add the command

usb --init

to your menu.lst file, (or create a new menu entry for it), and see if it improves your boot times!

if you find any problems with incompatibility on some hardware platforms, please raise a bug report here. Note that USB 3.0 controllers are not supported by the 0.4.6 USB driver, so only use USB 2.0 ports.

I thinks 'E2B' already contains  0.4.6 USB driver ?

Am I right ?

@ Steve6375

About usb --init command please confirm if I understood it the right way, here is an example of partial menu.lst in a USB:

color white/blue  black/light-gray
timeout 30
default 0
usb --init

title Iniciar MistyPE-8.1u1x64.iso\nEjecuta MistyPE-8.1u1x64.iso desde Disco USB
map (hd0,0)/Isos/MistyPE-8.1u1x64.iso (0xFF)
map --hook
chainloader (0xFF)

Thanks in advance

Just in case some one can't find it here is a link to download page: https://code.google..../downloads/list

yes, that should work, but on some systems it may hang or cause strange affects (like detecting 2 usb drives when there is only one). 

So I prefer to have a separate menu entry just for usb --init command.

Also, repeating the command sometimes causes issues, so be careful to only execute it once if you reload menus/sub-menus.

0.4.6a is still in Alpha development!

@ Steve6375

Thanks to you for the info, I'll make some test on my PC's to see how it works.

Best Regards