500GB USB external disk SLOW

[harry_platypus]

Greetings -
I purchased an external USB 2.0 disk enclosure to use with a Hitachi
Deskstar 500GB PATA disk. I'm running Windows XP Pro SP2, and the OS
sees the drive just fine. I built an NTFS filesystem on the disk and
tried copying some files to it... and it is SLOW. Sequentially writing
a 100MB file takes 1 - 2 MINUTES.

If I replace the 500GB disk in the enclosure with a Seagate 160GB or
Maxtor 250GB disk, I can write a 100GB file in 4 - 5 SECONDS. Likewise,
when I take the Hitachi 500GB out of the enclosure and hook it up to
the system on-board EIDE controller, writing a 100MB file takes 2 - 3
SECONDS.

It appears that, seperately, there is nothing wrong with either the
enclosure or the disk. But TOGETHER they slow to a crawl.

Is there some kind of disk size limit beyond which USB / EIDE
controller circuitry slows down? Any pointers or suggestions?
Thanks!
Harry

 

[Arno Wagner]

Greetings -
I purchased an external USB 2.0 disk enclosure to use with a Hitachi
Deskstar 500GB PATA disk. I'm running Windows XP Pro SP2, and the OS
sees the drive just fine. I built an NTFS filesystem on the disk and
tried copying some files to it... and it is SLOW. Sequentially writing
a 100MB file takes 1 - 2 MINUTES.

If I replace the 500GB disk in the enclosure with a Seagate 160GB or
Maxtor 250GB disk, I can write a 100GB file in 4 - 5 SECONDS. Likewise,
when I take the Hitachi 500GB out of the enclosure and hook it up to
the system on-board EIDE controller, writing a 100MB file takes 2 - 3
SECONDS.

It appears that, seperately, there is nothing wrong with either the
enclosure or the disk. But TOGETHER they slow to a crawl.

Is there some kind of disk size limit beyond which USB / EIDE
controller circuitry slows down? Any pointers or suggestions?

The original specification of your enclosure. Of course
it could just be sloppy/bad hardware on the enclosure's side.

Arno

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

The original specification of your enclosure.

Where it says "will slow down to a crawl when over a specific size", babblebot?