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    This isn't a direct answer to improving the write speed, but maybe you can cross compile on a machine with more horsepower and just copy the binaries over rather than building software on anemic little ARM boxen? Commented Aug 15, 2017 at 18:40
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    You're right that cross-compiling is much faster, and I use that when I can, but the poor write speeds affect things other than just compiling software. For example, I would like to use the boxes to read and write disk images to SD cards, but like I said writing a 1GB image to an SD card takes more than an hour, while it takes under a minute on an x86 PC. Commented Aug 15, 2017 at 18:42
  • Typically those kernels are a specific version "hacked" for the board. Forget about upgrades... Commented Aug 15, 2017 at 20:28
  • I was lucky enough to get the source for the kernel from the manufacturer, so I was thinking that it could be possible to essentially diff the manufacturer's version with the original Linux source, and 'apply the diff' (it would be much more complicated than that of course) to a newer kernel source. That would probably be quite a bit of work, though, so I think I am stuck with the kernel I have. Commented Aug 15, 2017 at 20:44
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    SD cards are slow, but minutes has to be a bug. Have you checked if there was a bug fix to the SD card driver after that kernel version was forked? Which version is it exactly, which manufacturer? Commented Aug 15, 2017 at 22:26