USB Drives Transfer Slowly

  • Thread starter Thread starter Thomas
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Thomas

I have a Windows Vista system. Dual core, pretty much the basic thing. I
have 2 USB harddrives connected. One that is about 2 years old and i brand
new 500 gig. When I try to move files from one drive to the other, it is
very slow. Only 4mb per second. When I move files around on my internal
hard drive, it flies. It never used to be like this. Do I have something
set wrong? Thanks.

Thomas
 
I have a Windows Vista system. Dual core, pretty much the basic thing.
I have 2 USB harddrives connected. One that is about 2 years old and
i brand new 500 gig. When I try to move files from one drive to the
other, it is very slow. Only 4mb per second. When I move files around
on my internal hard drive, it flies. It never used to be like this.
Do I have something set wrong? Thanks.

Thomas
Click to expand...

Has this only happened on Vista or just recently? Have you defragged
the USB drives too?
 
Byron Hinson said:
Has this only happened on Vista or just recently? Have you defragged the
USB drives too?
Click to expand...

When I had XP SP2 I only had the one 250 gig usb drive. I just bought the
500 gig usb drive after I bought a computer with Vista.. It also does it
when I copy a large folder from the USB to the internal hard drive but it's
a little faster. About 10mb per second. They both have been defragged. I
do have about 8 usb devices and Im using two hubs. It's all usb 2.0.
Anyway, it just seems very slow to me. Thanks.

Thomas
 
Transfers between USB 2.0 devices will be slow. Unless your
machine has multiple Enhanced controllers all USB 2.0 devices
are routed to a single Enhanced Controller and it's USB hub.
I basically use only eSata now, but still have a Pocket USB
drive ( Firelite 80.0 Gigabytes ). The drive only consumes 2 mA
of the Hubs 500mA but a the Bandwidth of the Controller will
show a reservation of 12% for the device. The Firelite usually
can reach a sustained average throughput of 27-Meg-per-Sec.
The only way to be able to use simultaneous USB Drives and
not have the USB controller get saturated is use the drives on
separate USB controllers. I frequently have to add a PCI add
in USB controller to some machines with lots of USB devices.
 
R. McCarty said:
Transfers between USB 2.0 devices will be slow. Unless your
machine has multiple Enhanced controllers all USB 2.0 devices
are routed to a single Enhanced Controller and it's USB hub.
I basically use only eSata now, but still have a Pocket USB
drive ( Firelite 80.0 Gigabytes ). The drive only consumes 2 mA
of the Hubs 500mA but a the Bandwidth of the Controller will
show a reservation of 12% for the device. The Firelite usually
can reach a sustained average throughput of 27-Meg-per-Sec.
The only way to be able to use simultaneous USB Drives and
not have the USB controller get saturated is use the drives on
separate USB controllers. I frequently have to add a PCI add
in USB controller to some machines with lots of USB devices.
Click to expand...
Instead of using my hubs, are you saying it would perform much better if I
went out and bought a 2.0 pci card that has many usb ports on it? Thanks.

Thomas
 
Have you upgraded to SP1? I noticed a big performance improvement in file
transfer in most all cases when I did so.
 
Every Controller has a Root Hub. Theoretically a USB channel can
support up to 127 devices. In practice the 500mA current limit and
the bandwidth would be consumed way before that many devices
are interconnected. USB is convenient but not that fast. A newer
version of USB (3.0) is coming that will address the speed issue.

The only way to tell whether a separate controller card would be a
benefit is to check the current Power/Bandwidth consumption on
your existing setup.
 
Bob F. said:
Have you upgraded to SP1? I noticed a big performance improvement in file
transfer in most all cases when I did so.
Click to expand...

I did not even know there was an update. I thought my computer was set to
do them but it missed this one. Im downloading it now and I will let you
know how it goes. Thanks.

Thomas
 
Thomas said:
I have a Windows Vista system. Dual core, pretty much the basic thing. I
have 2 USB harddrives connected. One that is about 2 years old and i brand
new 500 gig. When I try to move files from one drive to the other, it is
very slow. Only 4mb per second. When I move files around on my internal
hard drive, it flies. It never used to be like this. Do I have something
set wrong? Thanks.

Thomas
Click to expand...

I have installed SP1 and it has helped some. Still not quite as fast as one
would expect but much better. Thanks.

Thomas
 
Good...glad it helped at least. There is also a difference between drives,
so you might look at that. Just for reference,
I'm seeing 50 MB/s to 10 MB/s on a Flash USB Drive and 40 MB/s to 20 MB/s on
an USB / IDE HD.

USB = 2.0
B= Byte
 
You Also Might Try Re-Formatting The External Hard Disk Drive With NTFS, As
Most External Hard Disk Drives Come Pre-Configured 4 Windows XP And Older
(Using FAT 32), Just Remember 2 Re-Format It Back 2 Fat 32, If You Ever
Decide 2 Return 2 Windows XP Or Older, Just FYI.
 
Blattus Slafaly 0/00 ? ? ? said:
USB 2.0 max transfer speed is 60 MB/s. PATA is 133 MB/s SATA 150 is
187.5 MB/s SATA 300 is 375 MB/s eSATA is 375 MB/s (eSATA is external
drive)
Now the new coming USB 3.0 will be 600 MB/s.

In comparison Fibre Channel over fibre is 2000 MB/s.

As you see your USB harddrives are a bottleneck at 60 MB/s.
Click to expand...

I would be elated if I got half that much but rarely do I get over 10 MB/s.

Thomas
 
Thomas,
That is a bit slow. Are these decent drives? 7200 rpm 16 mb cash, etc.
Where are your USB ports? On the main mother board or on a remote board.
Try moving your connections to the main motherboard. You do have your virus
checking off, right? And do you realize that when you move (not copy) a
file that is contained within one drive, only the pointer is updated and
the file actually never moves. That may be one reason why it looks so much
faster.
 
Bob F. said:
Thomas,
That is a bit slow. Are these decent drives? 7200 rpm 16 mb cash, etc.
Where are your USB ports? On the main mother board or on a remote board.
Try moving your connections to the main motherboard. You do have your
virus checking off, right? And do you realize that when you move (not
copy) a file that is contained within one drive, only the pointer is
updated and the file actually never moves. That may be one reason why it
looks so much faster.
Click to expand...

The new 500 gig is a WD External My Book Essential and the older 250 gig is
a Maxtor. Both seem to be decent drives. I have them plugged into the
computer. I do have a couple of usb hubs but the drives are not in those.
Although Im not 100 percent sure, I believe the Maxtor was much faster in XP
as opposed to Vista but why, I have no clue. Thanks.

Thomas
 
Bob F. said:
Thomas,
That is a bit slow. Are these decent drives? 7200 rpm 16 mb cash, etc.
Where are your USB ports? On the main mother board or on a remote board.
Try moving your connections to the main motherboard. You do have your
virus checking off, right? And do you realize that when you move (not
copy) a file that is contained within one drive, only the pointer is
updated and the file actually never moves. That may be one reason why it
looks so much faster.
Click to expand...

I just did a little test to give an exact rate of transfer. Im moving a
12.0 gig folder from my 250 gig usb maxtor to the new 500 gig WD. At the
beginning the rate was over 12.0 MB/s. In about 3 minutes it dropped from
the 12 MB/s to 6 MB/s. The drop from 6MB/s to 5MB/s was much slower and
currently it's at about 4.95 MB/s. I do have macafee virus installed and on
but it is not scanning the computer. Anyway, something is not right but I
guess it's not that big of a deal, it's just bugging me. Thanks.

Thomas
 
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