Suggestions for Optimizing USB Transfer Rate

I recently bought Komplete 9 Ultimate from Native Instruments from their summer sale. Since all of the programs that come in that bundle total 370 GB, and that I might be running Komplete from two different computers, I bought an external usb 3.0 drive to install the samples. I know that running such a program from an external drive may not be ideal, but I do not have room on my internal drive and I do not have another sata port. My desktop does have two usb 3.0 ports and the hard drive I am getting is a 3.0 drive, but in my experience, usb was never good at transfer rates when considering their theoretical maximum. In the past, I have always gotten, on average 20 mbps on usb 2.0 (reading and writing). I have recently been transferring files back and forth to my usb 3.0 flash drive in a 3.0 port, and that only transfers on average 30 mbps (reading and writing). Of coarse these aren't 100% accurate averages. I know that the transfer rate will never hit the theoretical maximum, but considering that number is 4 gigabits per second (625 mbps), and that usb 3.0 is supposed to be ten times faster than usb 2.0, I would expect it to be better than 30 mbps (or am I completely out of the ballpark?) My question is what can I do to optimize the transfer rate between my desktop and an external usb 3.0 hard drive? I will post stats below:

-NZXT Technologies Source 210 Computer Case (Black)
-WD Blue 1 TB Desktop Hard Drive: 3.5 Inch, 7200 RPM, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64 MB Cache - WD10EZEX
-2 Crucial Ballistix Sport Very Low Profile 8GB Single DDR3-1600 1.35V UDIMM 240-Pin Memory Module BLS8G3D1609ES2LX0
-MSI Socket FM2/AMD A75/DDR3/SATA3&USB3.0/A&GbE/MicroATX Motherboard FM2-A75MA-E35
-AMD Quad Core A10-Series APU for Desktops A10-6800K with Radeon HD 8670D (AD680KWOHLBOX)
-Coolmax 600W 140mm Blue LED Fan Power Supply VL-600B (Black)

The flash drive I use is: Silicon Power Blaze B20 64 GB Entry Level USB 3.0 Flash Drive Read/Write 55/20 MB/s (Black)

And the Hard Drive that I will be getting is a WD My Passport Ultra 1TB Portable External USB 3.0 Hard Drive with Auto Backup - Blue

Any help will be greatly appreciated!

One thing I observed while transferring large video files from PC to external storage is that the fragmentation of the file on a spinning hard drive can make a big difference in the transfer rate.

If I had recorded 2 or 3 videos at one time the fragmentation of each file was huge and the transfer rate was relatively slow.
If there was only one video recorded the transfer rate was faster.
As an experiment, if I defragmented the single file there was not much of a change - this due to the behavior of defragmenters and large files.

You can experiment by transfering the same large file (2GB or more) from hard drive to Stick on USB3, and then back again, from stick to hard drive and then note the difference in transfer speed. Then try the same on one of your USB2 ports and note the difference.
That will give you your real world improvement of USB3 over USB2.

USB 3 provides for a data transfer rate of up to 5Gb/s or about 500MB/s. But that is only the transfer rate between the device and the computer. But another limit on performance is the speed of the drive itself which in many cases is much slower. A chain is only as strong as it's weakest link and the performance of a storage system is that of the slowest in the chain. Typically that will be the drive. At present only a good SSD will reach the speed of USB3.

30MB/s isn't bad for a typical flash drive. USB will limit that but USB 3 will not.

ICit2lol said:

Hiyya ZJE I don't know much about this sort of stuff but maybe this might help you
How to Optimize USB Drive Performance in Windows 7

Yep you are right too the theoretical transfer rates are not that realistic at least not in my experience. For example an image takes marginally longer to do with Macrium with 2.0 than the 3.0 ports.

Thanks for the link, it seems as though this might help!

ICit2lol said:

Hmm well just for an example an image of my C: drive (79GB) to my WD My Passport external (3.0 USB ) takes about 12 minuutes I don't know what that equates to in transfer rates but to me.

79 / (60x12) = .22 GB per second
236 MB per second

TVeblen said:

One thing I observed while transferring large video files from PC to external storage is that the fragmentation of the file on a spinning hard drive can make a big difference in the transfer rate.

If I had recorded 2 or 3 videos at one time the fragmentation of each file was huge and the transfer rate was relatively slow.
If there was only one video recorded the transfer rate was faster.
As an experiment, if I defragmented the single file there was not much of a change - this due to the behavior of defragmenters and large files.

You can experiment by transfering the same large file (2GB or more) from hard drive to Stick on USB3, and then back again, from stick to hard drive and then note the difference in transfer speed. Then try the same on one of your USB2 ports and note the difference.
That will give you your real world improvement of USB3 over USB2.

LMiller7 said:

USB 3 provides for a data transfer rate of up to 5Gb/s or about 500MB/s. But that is only the transfer rate between the device and the computer. But another limit on performance is the speed of the drive itself which in many cases is much slower. A chain is only as strong as it's weakest link and the performance of a storage system is that of the slowest in the chain. Typically that will be the drive. At present only a good SSD will reach the speed of USB3.

30MB/s isn't bad for a typical flash drive. USB will limit that but USB 3 will not.

I think you are both right about the fragmentation and the disk speed itself, I never thought about those things. Unfortunately the part of the program I would be putting onto the hard drive are the samples (.wav files). Sometimes the program (Komplete) will use hundreds or even thousands of these wave files at a time. Luckily, since I have 16gb of ram, I could probably just load all of the samples onto the ram which means I would only have to transfer them off of the hard drive once, unlike if I had less ram where this would happen as many times as there is samples (the program has a built in subroutine that will transfer the files back and forth from the hard drive if needed due to insufficient ram).

ICit2lol said:

Hmm well just for an example an image of my C: drive (79GB) to my WD My Passport external (3.0 USB ) takes about 12 minuutes I don't know what that equates to in transfer rates but to me.
Not much to me but I guess if you are delaing with huge amountsof data it might bother some.

I think it all depends on what someone has already said as what the machine can handle at the weakest link.

That equates to about 109 mbps, if I am doing my math right, which would be definitely good enough for this program for sure, that's a lot better than 30 mbps.

TVeblen said:

ICit2lol said:

Hmm well just for an example an image of my C: drive (79GB) to my WD My Passport external (3.0 USB ) takes about 12 minuutes I don't know what that equates to in transfer rates but to me.

79 / (60x12) = .22 GB per second
236 MB per second

Maybe my math is wrong but I keep on coming up with .109GB
https://www.google.com/search?q=79+%...+x+12)&spell=1

ZJE123 said:

TVeblen said:

ICit2lol said:

Hmm well just for an example an image of my C: drive (79GB) to my WD My Passport external (3.0 USB ) takes about 12 minuutes I don't know what that equates to in transfer rates but to me.

79 / (60x12) = .22 GB per second
236 MB per second

Maybe my math is wrong but I keep on coming up with .109GB
https://www.google.com/search?q=79+%...+x+12)&spell=1

Yep; 109 megs.

79 GB in 12 minutes is equivalent to 395 GB per hour.

3600 seconds per hour.

395 GB divided by 3600 seconds is .1097222 GB per second aka 109.7222 MB per second