The pernicious USB-stick stall problem

echo $((16*1024*1024)) > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_background_bytes
echo $((48*1024*1024)) > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_bytes

Didn't help me. The performance did improve but it would still lag. (I have a 1TB HDD and 8GB RAM)

My question is, is using a hack to go around this a good thing? Like `ionice`, `rsync`, `pv`? I have seen these being thrown around in the internet. And I have used rsync and it works.