Make USB drive fast in Windows 11

USB hard drive in Win11 has been terribly slow for transferring files and even just listing files in a folder.

Typeical suggestions like "Enable write cache" and select "Better performance" didn't help much.

The tricks that really make USB fast is to: 

1. disable Remote Differential Compression (RDC) in Windows Features on/off setting, and 

2. disable Large Send Offload in Network Adapter setting,

according to this excellent guide.

 Export reference in Word into citation

https://citation-finder.vercel.app/

Avoid unnecessary hidden files like .DS_Store on Mac

Each file occupies 4k, which can become a lot of waste in disk space and speed.

Based on this webpage, use the following command to disable MacOS from creating those hidden files on network and USB drives:

defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores true

defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteUSBStores -bool true

Another elegant way is to use TinkerTool or CleanMyMac.

 Optimize MTU on internet

Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) is a setting in TCP/IP. If not properly set, the internet speed could be slow down. This blog provides details on how to test and optimize the MTU.

Listing only folders in MacOS shell

On Linux/Unix, one can use "ls -d" to display folders. But somehow this doesn't work in MacOS. Instead, one should use " ls -d */" to display folders. 

Install Linux as dual boot with Windows

 Although Windows can run Linux as a subsystem, it may not work properly when GUI is needed. To install Ubuntu as a dual boot system is very straightforward:

1. Download Linux ISO file.

2. Use Etcher to create a bootable USB for Linux. Etcher supports Windows, MacOS and Linux.

3. After using the USB to boot up Windows PC, it allows you to adjust partition of your C: drive to make space for Linux. No need to use other disk partition tools anymore!

After the installation and rebooting, the dual boot menu may not show up and the PC still boots into Windows. Do the following:

4. Go to Setup --> Windows Update --> Recovery, and choose to restart.

5. After rebooting into the recovery mode, choose Troubleshoot --> Advanced --> Repair Disk Image.

Then the system will reboot again. This time the dual boot menu shows up! Done!

Switch off internal display of MacBook when connected to external monitor

When connected to external monitor, MacBook still has its internal display turned on. This dual display mode consumes GPU power and drags down performance on graphics and games. BetterDisplay is a powerful tool to customize tones of settings, including turning on/off each display/monitor connected.