Slow transfer speed to external USB Hard disk?

Hi

Im getting really slow transfer speeds to external usb hard disk.
Transfering a big file it starts off quite quick and gets up to 5% or so quite quickly.
Then it starts to slow down until it settles at around 5MB/s

Im at a loss i was expecting around 40MB/s maybe on USB 2 ?

My specs are (taken from CPUID)
Gigabyte GA-MA780G-UD3H motherboard
8GB DD2 4-4-4-12 @401Mhz
AMD Phenom II x4 940 @ 3013Mhz

Im at a loss. Is it a driver issue? When connected it shows under "Universal Serial Bus Controllers" as "USB Mass Storage Device"

any ideas please?

For normal external USB 2 HDD I might expect ~30MB/s for a sequential file transfer.
What type of USB HDD are you using?

You could download CrystalDiskMark and post the performance figures.
Download Center - Crystal Dew World

Running the test on another HDD as well would be useful if you can get your hands on one. Might indicate a drive specific issue.

Here's some 3rd party software that can help you:

TeraCopy - a freeware file copy utility which can replace Windows’ own copy handler; very stable and provides much faster file transfers.

FastCopy – excellent and generally thought to be better/faster than TeraCopy

(For a comparison between the two, see: Windows Ranks Third in File Transfer Tests - Softpedia)

Irrespective of your final choice of copy software, a standard "Windows" sequential file transfer should not run at 5MB/s to a USB connected HDD.
I would sort out the root cause of your problem first.

Note: Transfer rates to a USB flash drive/stick is normally slow.

Hi,

thanks for the replys

yes, write caching is selected for the drive under device manager "better performance"

the drive is a Western Digital My Passport 500GB


crystaldiskmark gives the following for the drive:-
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 x64 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : Crystal Dew World
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 26.723 MB/s
Sequential Write : 5.398 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 18.373 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 5.433 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 0.482 MB/s [ 117.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 0.388 MB/s [ 94.8 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 0.526 MB/s [ 128.5 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 0.433 MB/s [ 105.6 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [H: 43.8% (193.5/441.6 GB)] (x1)
Date : 2011/06/08 19:38:55
OS : Windows 7 Ultimate Edition [6.1 Build 7600] (x64)

I only have one other usb hdd i can try and thats also a My Passport but its a 300GB i think, same test ran on crystaldisk gives:-
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 x64 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : Crystal Dew World
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 26.732 MB/s
Sequential Write : 24.482 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 18.179 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 23.046 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 0.441 MB/s [ 107.6 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 0.860 MB/s [ 210.1 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 0.515 MB/s [ 125.8 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 0.876 MB/s [ 213.8 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [H: 0.3% (0.1/32.2 GB)] (x1)
Date : 2011/06/08 19:47:49
OS : Windows 7 Ultimate Edition [6.1 Build 7600] (x64)


Different results? Is the drive faulty somehow?

EDIT: Just noticed the drive giving better performance has write caching disabled which seems the wrong way round to me
EDIT AGAIN: Disabled write caching on the slow drive as an experiment but it made it slower

ok, thanks, suspected as much. i think ive had it for over 12 months now so ill have to live with it i guess

WD warranties vary in different parts of the world.
In the USA I thought MY Passport was 2-3 years?
http://support.wdc.com/warranty/policy.asp#americas

jonnyremembered said:

ok, thanks, suspected as much. i think ive had it for over 12 months now so ill have to live with it i guess

Why don't you try the 3rd party apps I suggested:

TeraCopy - a freeware file copy utility which can replace Windows’ own copy handler; very stable and provides much faster file transfers.

FastCopy – excellent and generally thought to be better/faster than TeraCopy

(For a comparison between the two, see: Windows Ranks Third in File Transfer Tests - Softpedia)