Are these transfer speeds normal?

tgfyhre · 21 Jun 2015

I have several external 4-drive enclosures. I have been using esata with an esata pci card since my computer doesn't have USB3, and I've been getting around 59-65MBps.

I bought a new USB3.0/esata enclosure last week, and decided to install a USB 3.0 pci card and try USB 3.0. So the card installed fine and the driver from the company website installed without issue. Today I connected the enclosure via USB 3.0 and the transfer speeds I'm getting are right around the same as my esata speeds - around 59-65MBps. By comparison, my USB 2.0 speed is around 29-33 MBps.

So USB 3.0 is faster than my USB 2.0, which is good, but I was expecting better performance out of USB 3. Could it be something on my motherboard that is causing a bottleneck in the speed, or could it be the hard drives itself that is the bottleneck? They're just standard 7,200 drives.

ignatzatsonic · 21 Jun 2015

60 mbs is about 216 GB per hour.

I've kept track of copying speeds on several of my drives, using both eSATA and USB 2.0.

My only USB 3.0 tests involve USB thumb drives, so I haven't included them.

Here's some examples of my actual speeds. Make of them what you will.

I've heard conflicting reports about whether eSATA is faster than USB 3.0 in real-world situations. I've heard yes and no.

Offhand, it looks to me like you get about the same speed from both, which may be completely normal on your hardware. I just don't know what you can necessarily expect in actual use from USB 3.0 on typical hardware.

159 GB per hour drag and drop from Samsung 7200 internal to WD Green 5400 internal.

218 GB per hour drag and drop from Samsung 7200 rpm internal to an old WD 640 gb 7200 mounted in an external dock via eSATA.

273 GB per hour drag and drop from Samsung internal 7200 to a new, fast, but 5400 rpm WD 3 TB Green internal.

270 GB per hour drag and drop from Samsung internal 7200 to new internal 1 TB WD Blue 7200 mounted in an external dock, via eSATA.

All of these examples were with a variety of files, averaging under 500 KB each.

In my experience, the larger the file size, the faster the speed.

LMiller7 · 21 Jun 2015

With USB 2 and most drives the USB performance will be the limiting factor. 29-33 MB/s is typical.
USB 3 is much faster at about 500 MB/s. But that is only the theoretical transfer rate and there are other factors that limit performance. Only an SSD can reach those levels while no conventional drive can come close. With USB 3 and conventional drives the drive itself is usually the limiting factor.

Exactly what drives do you have and how was the performance measured?

GokAy · 22 Jun 2015

Both esata and usb3 are capable of maximizing HDD drives. But as mentioned real values can change. My only USB3 drive can do 60-70 MB/s. My eSata drive does 90 MB/s. Depending on filesize these will go down. Steam archieve was 70-75 MB/s when transfered to eSata drive for example.

The fact that both values for you is the same, makes me think your internal HDD is limiting. Do you have 2 external HDD? If you can plug in both enclosures and copy from one to other you can perhaps see a different value.