I have done a few tests to measure copy speed during Text portion of setup. Here are the results:

NLited XP source, 5251 files occupying 399.7 MB. After the copy part on destination drive are found 2850 files, occupying 476MB.
Preparation made by WinSetupFromUSB 0.1.1, run on XP SP2 system, C2D 4300@2.9GHz.
USB stick- Lexar JD Lightening 1100 1GB, which is relatively fast:


In all cases stick was quick formatted using HP USB format tool 2.0.6.
To check if USB write protection via migrate.inf plays role I tested without it as well.
All tests performed intentionally on an old Celeron 1.7MHz/384MB RAM/VIA 266KM chipset, which supports USB 2.0 once the USB drivers are loaded.

FAT16:
Stick prepared for ~15 min. (899 secs.)
Text mode copy part with USB write-protection- 4:10
Text mode copy part without USB write-protection- 6:13

FAT32:
Stick prepared for ~21 min. (1253 secs.)
Text mode copy part with USB write-protection- 12:58
Text mode copy part without USB write-protection- 7:15

NTFS:
Stick prepared for ~4 min. (238 secs.)
Text mode copy part with USB write-protection- 1:42
Text mode copy part without USB write-protection- 1:45

It really puzzles me why FAT32 is so slow compared to FAT16

If your system supports USB boot from NTFS formatted partitions AND you are not planning excessive usage of the USB stick in terms of write operations, where NTFS may wear it out (disputable with modern USB sticks), NTFS seems to be the way to go.

This post has been edited by ilko_t: Oct 24 2008, 01:51 PM

Just for the record, a comparison test with different filesystems on different sticks:
http://www.testfreaks.com/blog/information...-ntfs-vs-exfat/

Is it possible that Vista has re-added some speed to FAT32?

jaclaz