USB2 no quicker than USB1

[Geoff Lane]

Acer ASPIRE 1301XV laptop AMD Athlone XP1500
Kouwell 2002-2 2 Ports USB 2.0 CardBus/PCMCIA adapter
PCMCIA Controller O2micro OZ6912 cardBus Controller

I have an Acer laptop with XP home installed and two USB1 sockets.

I've got an external box that houses an IDE Hard Drive with USB2
connectors.

I recently bought a Kouwell PC card that gives me two USB2 sockets.

Installation went OK and it shows up correctly in device manager,
trouble is I have no noticable increase in speed.

To test I have a 50MB text file consisting of capital As only, to
transfer it from my internal hard drive to my external one connected
to USB1 took 90 seconds; I think that is about 5mbps.

Connecting the external box to my USB2 sockets took almost the same,
tested three times it was between 75 and 85 seconds, hardly the
blistering 400+ mbps that I expected.

Any ideas what may be wrong...

Geoff Lane
Welwyn Hatfield Computer Club - Hertfordshire, UK
www.whcc.co.uk - Online facilities for non locals

 

[Alien Zord]

Acer ASPIRE 1301XV laptop AMD Athlone XP1500
Kouwell 2002-2 2 Ports USB 2.0 CardBus/PCMCIA adapter
PCMCIA Controller O2micro OZ6912 cardBus Controller

I have an Acer laptop with XP home installed and two USB1 sockets.

I've got an external box that houses an IDE Hard Drive with USB2
connectors.

I recently bought a Kouwell PC card that gives me two USB2 sockets.

Installation went OK and it shows up correctly in device manager,
trouble is I have no noticable increase in speed.

To test I have a 50MB text file consisting of capital As only, to
transfer it from my internal hard drive to my external one connected
to USB1 took 90 seconds; I think that is about 5mbps.

Connecting the external box to my USB2 sockets took almost the same,
tested three times it was between 75 and 85 seconds, hardly the
blistering 400+ mbps that I expected.

I just run a test on my desktop PC: newly received tiny external enclosures
holding 2.5" notebook hard drive and it plugs into two USB2.0 ports in order
to take 1A of current. Fitted 40GB 5400 rpm Hitachi HDD.

428MB mpeg2 video file took 25 seconds. That's over 17MB/s (or 127Mbps).

Have you tested your external HDD on a desktop PC?

 

[kony]

Acer ASPIRE 1301XV laptop AMD Athlone XP1500
Kouwell 2002-2 2 Ports USB 2.0 CardBus/PCMCIA adapter
PCMCIA Controller O2micro OZ6912 cardBus Controller

I have an Acer laptop with XP home installed and two USB1 sockets.

I've got an external box that houses an IDE Hard Drive with USB2
connectors.

I recently bought a Kouwell PC card that gives me two USB2 sockets.

Installation went OK and it shows up correctly in device manager,
trouble is I have no noticable increase in speed.

To test I have a 50MB text file consisting of capital As only, to
transfer it from my internal hard drive to my external one connected
to USB1 took 90 seconds; I think that is about 5mbps.

Connecting the external box to my USB2 sockets took almost the same,
tested three times it was between 75 and 85 seconds, hardly the
blistering 400+ mbps that I expected.

Any ideas what may be wrong...

Geoff Lane
Welwyn Hatfield Computer Club - Hertfordshire, UK
www.whcc.co.uk - Online facilities for non locals

Doesn't XP require SP1 for USB2, and do you have SP1 installed?
What exactly does it show up as in device manager, an OHCI or EHCI device?
OHCI is USB1, EHCI USB2.

The results Alien Zord saw, 17MB/s, or around 150Mbps are typical, the
"400+Mbps" you wrote is only a theoretical bus speed, is impossible to
attain.

 

[Geoff Lane]

428MB mpeg2 video file took 25 seconds. That's over 17MB/s (or 127Mbps).

Have you tested your external HDD on a desktop PC?

At the moment I am unable to, home desktop does not have USB2 and due
to building work at home items not always close to hand.

I will give your suggestion a try though.

Geoff Lane

 

[Geoff Lane]

Doesn't XP require SP1 for USB2, and do you have SP1 installed?
What exactly does it show up as in device manager, an OHCI or EHCI device?
OHCI is USB1, EHCI USB2.

My daughter's computer, I believe she updates via the Microsoft site
regularly.

Re Device Manager - when the USB2 PCMCIA card is plugged in it shows
the following;
NEC PCI to USB Enhanced Host Controller (B1)
NEC PCI to USB Open Host Controller
NEC PCI to USB Open Host Controller
USB Root Hub
USB Root Hub
USB Root Hub
USB Root Hub
VIA Rev 5 or later USB Universal Host Controller

When the USB2 PCMCIA card is unplugged it shows the following;
USB Root Hub
VIA Rev 5 or later USB Universal Host Controller

Geoff Lane

 

[Geoff Lane]

The results Alien Zord saw, 17MB/s, or around 150Mbps are typical, the
"400+Mbps" you wrote is only a theoretical bus speed, is impossible to
attain.

Yes, I've realised with a recent WiFi purchase that manufacturers are
wildely optimistic with performance claims and leave out things like
'A brick wall may affect range', most houses seem to have brick walls.

Geoff Lane
Welwyn Hatfield Computer Club - Hertfordshire, UK
www.whcc.co.uk - Online facilities for non locals

 

[kony]

My daughter's computer, I believe she updates via the Microsoft site
regularly.

Re Device Manager - when the USB2 PCMCIA card is plugged in it shows
the following;
NEC PCI to USB Enhanced Host Controller (B1)
NEC PCI to USB Open Host Controller
NEC PCI to USB Open Host Controller
USB Root Hub
USB Root Hub
USB Root Hub
USB Root Hub
VIA Rev 5 or later USB Universal Host Controller

When the USB2 PCMCIA card is unplugged it shows the following;
USB Root Hub
VIA Rev 5 or later USB Universal Host Controller

You might try uninstalling/reinstalling the NEC controller(s), I believe
at least one of the "USB Root Hubs" should be appearing with "USB 2". If
the drivers used for the USB2 card were those included with the card you
might also seek newer driver from card manufacturer.

You should also check whether WinXp SP1 is installed... info on
Microsoft's website or Google search should provide methods of determining
this.

 

[Geoff Lane]

Acer ASPIRE 1301XV laptop AMD Athlone XP1500
Kouwell 2002-2 2 Ports USB 2.0 CardBus/PCMCIA adapter
PCMCIA Controller O2micro OZ6912 cardBus Controller

I recently bought a Kouwell PC card that gives me two USB2 sockets.

Connecting the external box to my USB2 sockets took almost the same,
tested three times it was between 75 and 85 seconds, hardly the
blistering 400+ mbps that I expected.

O2Micro, who produce the PCMCIA interface, sent me by return email a
patch that has reduced the transfer time on the 50MB file from 80
seconds to 10 seconds.

Damned site better than 80 seconds but still only about 40mbps and
about 1/3rd of Alien Zord transfer speed.

What would be the transfer rate between two internal 5400 IDE hard
drives?

Geoff Lane

 

[kony]

O2Micro, who produce the PCMCIA interface, sent me by return email a
patch that has reduced the transfer time on the 50MB file from 80
seconds to 10 seconds.

Interesting. Any chance you'd email that to me @ (to decode address,
remove even numbers);
(e-mail address removed)

Damned site better than 80 seconds but still only about 40mbps and
about 1/3rd of Alien Zord transfer speed.

Some enclosure chips are better than others, though I don't know if this
is the problem. Still that 40Mbps may be all you can realistically hope
for.

What would be the transfer rate between two internal 5400 IDE hard
drives?

Depends on the age, old notebook drive might be 4MB/s, newer/large desktop
drives are closer to 40MB/s in an isolated test, though might be closer to
25MB/s in real world usage.

 

[Alien Zord]

O2Micro, who produce the PCMCIA interface, sent me by return email a
patch that has reduced the transfer time on the 50MB file from 80
seconds to 10 seconds.

Damned site better than 80 seconds but still only about 40mbps and
about 1/3rd of Alien Zord transfer speed.

What would be the transfer rate between two internal 5400 IDE hard
drives?

Geoff Lane

My test was done on a 3.5GHz P4 desktop PC whose internal hard drives are
capable of 40MB/s drive to drive copy speed so with USB2.0 the limiting
factor presumably would have been the external HDD.
Unfortunately, currently I don't have access to a notebook with USB2.0 so
can't carry out a comparative test. May have in a week or so.

 

[Geoff Lane]

My test was done on a 3.5GHz P4 desktop PC whose internal hard drives are
capable of 40MB/s drive to drive copy speed

Ah, so the theory is that USB2 at a claimed 400mbps should be as fast
transferring files as internal 40MB/s which I assume is around
320mbps.

I appreciate 400mbps sells devices whereas the truth may not.

so with USB2.0 the limiting
factor presumably would have been the external HDD.

Naively I was hoping to be able to run a 'portable' Linux system with
GUI from the external box for demonstration purposes.

Unfortunately, currently I don't have access to a notebook with USB2.0 so
can't carry out a comparative test. May have in a week or so.

I only used the laptop as I bought my daughter a USB2 PCMCIA card
hoping that she may be able to load some of her games on the external
box and play them efficiently, my desktop machines are a bit older and
I haven't got round to upgrading to USB2 as yet but Firewire is
sounding a better bet.

Geoff Lane

 

[Geoff Lane]

Interesting. Any chance you'd email that to me @ (to decode address,
remove even numbers);
(e-mail address removed)

Apologies, might be being Mr thicky here but is that me9@etc or 9@etc

Geoff Lane
Welwyn Hatfield Computer Club - Hertfordshire, UK
www.whcc.co.uk - Online facilities for non locals

 

[kony]

9@etc

 

[Geoff Lane]

Interesting. Any chance you'd email that to me @ (to decode address,
remove even numbers);
(e-mail address removed)

Kony,

Link to file sent by email.

Geoff Lane
Welwyn Hatfield Computer Club - Hertfordshire, UK
www.whcc.co.uk - Online facilities for non locals

 

[kony]

Link to file sent by email.

Thanks.

Unfortunately it's in MSI format, which I haven't learned to extract.
The wonderous part is that, if the "patch" does only what they claim,
changing a register, it could've occupied 1 to 100K, it's only thanks to
Microsoft that now we have multi-megabyte files instead.

Anyway, it just seems as though they didn't fully develop the driver,
released it in essentially beta stage without bothering to test on enough
platforms. Even if that's true, I have no explanation of why it's still
on the slow side.

 

[Geoff Lane]

Thanks.

Unfortunately it's in MSI format, which I haven't learned to extract.

You've thrown me a bit here, it came to me in a zip file which had 8
files inside including the normal 'setup' file.

The wonderous part is that, if the "patch" does only what they claim,
changing a register, it could've occupied 1 to 100K, it's only thanks to
Microsoft that now we have multi-megabyte files instead.

Absolutely, normally the way, sledgehammer to crack a nut springs to
mind ))

Anyway, it just seems as though they didn't fully develop the driver,
released it in essentially beta stage without bothering to test on enough
platforms.

Sounds about right.

Geoff Lane

 

[kony]

You've thrown me a bit here, it came to me in a zip file which had 8
files inside including the normal 'setup' file.

Yes, unzip it, then there is "something" more in the MSI file... perhaps
more parameters for when to use the patch? I don't know.

Regardless, if PCI latency issues are affecting the performance you might
also try adjusting the PCI latency in the BIOS... values between 32-128
ought to be tried/compared.

 

[Geoff Lane]

Regardless, if PCI latency issues are affecting the performance you might
also try adjusting the PCI latency in the BIOS... values between 32-128
ought to be tried/compared.

Damned laptop doesn't give me an option to do much with the BIOS, just
change the BOOT order and little else.

Geoff Lane
Welwyn Hatfield Computer Club - Hertfordshire, UK
www.whcc.co.uk - Online facilities for non locals