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[zwei]

unless you're using USB1 it shouldn't be THAT slow.

my current saves are <30MB and usb2 has a transfer rate of 480 Mbit/s (about 57MB/s) so to actualy save the data it should be less than a second.

hell, that's faster than a 100mbps network, and I've played it from a network drive no problems.

I have DF on USB2 connected hard drive, 2x2 embark autosavessaves for about one minute, so ... (but again, I have autobackup turned on so it does more than just save data)

[se5a]

check if compression is on too, if you're using a crappy PC and compression is on for the saves then you might get a slowdown there.

[Dave Mongoose]

... consider a portable hard drive instead of a flash drive - it should work just as easily (most don't need special drivers or anything, but ask before you buy), and it's likely to have a much faster transfer rate than a flash drive so you'll have less issues with saving and loading.

Transfer speed isn't limited by the drive, it's limited by the interface. Since most external drives and flash drives are USB, it's limited to USB's positively sluggish rates. Otherwise, saving to a flash drive would actually be faster than to a harddrive.

As se5a says, USB2 is a lot faster than you give it credit for.

A couple of quotes from wikipedia:
"For writes and consecutive sector reads (for example, from an unfragmented file) most hard drives can provide a much higher sustained data rate than current NAND flash memory."
"Modern flash drives have USB 2.0 connectivity. However, they do not currently use the full 480 Mbit/s (60MB/s) the USB 2.0 Hi-Speed specification supports because of technical limitations inherent in NAND flash. The fastest drives currently available use a dual channel controller, although they still fall considerably short of the transfer rate possible from a current generation hard disk, or the maximum high speed USB throughput."
"Typical fast drives claim to read at up to 30 megabytes/s (MB/s) and write at about half that"

Flash is faster for small reads/writes because it doesn't need to spin up like a HDD, but with something large like a DF save folder the flash memory will be slower.

[Deon]

check if compression is on too, if you're using a crappy PC and compression is on for the saves then you might get a slowdown there.

Yeah most of the save's time is spent on allocating and collecting data, actual "saving" takes just a part of it. Turn off the save compression, also you will be able to mod forgotten beasts this way .

[buzz killington]

I feel for you bro.  I've been travelling for a few weeks for work and the laptop I'm assigned sucks horribly.  No DF for a few weeks 

[Urist Imiknorris]

There is a problem with laptops - I got a brand new one as a graduation gift, and it ran 40d at 30fps on embark.

[3]

"A problem with laptops" is likely more accurately "A problem with the way DF interfaces with modern processors". My one doesn't have any problems as such, but it is far slower than my desktop, and is multicored where the latter isn't.

[axus]

The crappy public computers might be using USB1, though...