There's an issue with Ubuntu that hasn't been fixed yet, where the PC freezes or gets really slow whenever it is copying to an USB stick (see Why is my PC freezing while I'm copying a file to a pendrive?, http://lwn.net/Articles/572911/ and https://askubuntu.com/q/508108/234374).
A workaround is to execute the following commands as root (see here for an explanation) as root:
echo $((16*1024*1024)) > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_background_bytes
echo $((48*1024*1024)) > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_bytes
How do I revert these changes? When I restart my PC, will it get rolled back to default values?
/proc
, and not mention usb-sticks in the title. But keep the detail as an appendix to the question. – ctrl-alt-delor Aug 07 '14 at 16:07