Speed of USB

[Pat]

I have three Maxtor HD drives attached to me recently re-arranged system:

C: is 80Gig with only system and program files; Primary Master
( D and E are CD)
F: is a 300Gig Maxtor internal for storage of data, mostly jpg files.
(G, H and I are a card reader, presently living on a USB 1 hub which also
talks to keyboard, mouse, printer, etc.)
J: is a 160Gig external Maxtor on the USB 2 / Firewire PCI card. This was
the addition which started me thinking!

I have put together a folder of 118 jpg files which total 501 MB; that is
0.5Gig in my book!
I have just measured and checked the following times:

C to C copy = 55 secs.
Copy from C to F (internal) = 3 minutes 40 sec.
Move from F back to C = 3 minutes 45 sec.
Copy from F to J (external) via USB2 = 4 minutes 30 sec.
Copy from J to F (Internal) via USB2 = 4 minutes 35 sec.

There is no other activity on the computer except for the various services
etc.
Running Task Manager shows that CPU activity is low during all of this,
except for a peak at one minute intervals
which occurs wether copying files or not. I have run Spybot and Ad Aware to
see if they have any effect on this spike.
No effect!

Please let me know how long a similar copy takes on your machine!

Your results and comments will be very much appreciated.

Pat

 

[Not Me]

You imply that you also have have Firewire {which type?}. If so,switch
the external Hard Drive to the Firewire jack and measure that to see if
transfer speed is improved. My only other comment is that 501 MB is a
BUNCH of data.
Gene K

 

[Kevin]

To keep data transmission speeds in perspective, the military has a system
for the downloading and transfer of data that could run through your 300 GB
Maxtor in the time it just took me to type this sentence and you to read it.
Now wouldn't you like to get your hands on the system that can do that? And
it can be done from any of their platforms, land, sea, air or space, to any
other platform.

 

[Bob Davis]

I have three Maxtor HD drives attached to me recently re-arranged system:

C: is 80Gig with only system and program files; Primary Master
( D and E are CD)
F: is a 300Gig Maxtor internal for storage of data, mostly jpg files.
(G, H and I are a card reader, presently living on a USB 1 hub which also
talks to keyboard, mouse, printer, etc.)
J: is a 160Gig external Maxtor on the USB 2 / Firewire PCI card. This was
the addition which started me thinking!

I have put together a folder of 118 jpg files which total 501 MB; that is
0.5Gig in my book!
I have just measured and checked the following times:

C to C copy = 55 secs.
Copy from C to F (internal) = 3 minutes 40 sec.
Move from F back to C = 3 minutes 45 sec.
Copy from F to J (external) via USB2 = 4 minutes 30 sec.
Copy from J to F (Internal) via USB2 = 4 minutes 35 sec.

There is no other activity on the computer except for the various services
etc.
Running Task Manager shows that CPU activity is low during all of this,
except for a peak at one minute intervals
which occurs wether copying files or not. I have run Spybot and Ad Aware
to
see if they have any effect on this spike.
No effect!

Please let me know how long a similar copy takes on your machine!

Your results and comments will be very much appreciated.

Last week I did some tests from some various devices that might give some
comparative insight:

C: 36gb x 2 WD Raptor SATA's in RAID0 array
D: 160gb Maxtor PATA (6Y160P0) w/8mb buffer
F: Lexar external firewire card reader (to 256mb Lexar 4x Compactflash
card)
G: 40mb WD w/2mb buffer in USB2 mobile rack
J: 100mb WD w/8mb buffer in external firewire enclosure
K: 120mb WD w/2mb buffer in external firewire enclosure

Test: Copy 362mb of files approx. 4mb each. Computer was rebooted before
each test to flush the cache.

D: > C: = 9 sec.
D: > J: = 17 sec.
D: > K: = 17 sec.
D: > G: = 22 sec.
D: > F: = 75 sec.

Your performance is substandard, even going from C: > C:, and you have some
bottleneck somewhere. Give more details, like the specs on the HD's and
where they're connected (e.g., master or slave, buffer size, RPM's, etc.).
The 300gb Maxtor may be one of their 5400rpm drives, but even if so
shouldn't be this slow. I have two ancient 20gb 5400-rpm drives in service
that are much faster than you're experiencing.

 

[Rube]

F: is most likely the slave off one of your CD-ROM devices.

Set your IDE drives as follows:

IDE1 --> 80GB HD (master) --> CD-Rom 1 (slave)
IDE2 --> 300GB HD (master) --> CD-Rom 2 (slave)

Make SURE you have jumpered everything correctly!

 

[Pat]

Gentlemen! --- Thank you!

Your confirmation that my drives were running well below par has encouraged
me to un-install all of my USB ports, in device manager. (except for the
original Ali motherboard ports. I was nor sure about uninstalling these.
there seems to be more USB ports listed in device manager than I can
phisically find on my system!)

Windows started to re-install them before I could re-boot the system.

RESULT!!

A 500 meg copy now takes 20 to 40 seconds instead of 4 minutes. about 8
times faster!

A slight funny, though. Repairing the USB ports seems to have also repaired
the IDE to IDE speed.
Except that writing to my 300Gig, from my internal IDE drive or from my
external USB2, takes about 10 seconds before anything seems to start, then
about 2 minutes to complete. Copying FROM this drive to either internal or
external drives is very quick - 20 seconds

Both internal IDE drives are on IDE1, 80GB is master, 300GB is slave.
Both CD drives are on IDE2. I thought that a slow (CD) drive on an IDE
channel would slow that channel to the speed of the slowest device, the CD.

Comments please.

Pat

 

[Pat]

Sorry, forgot!

The 80G drive is a maxtor 6Y080LO
The 300GB drive is a maxtor 6B300RO

any significance??

Pat