Help with usb performance

This is not a hardware issue. I have the task of copying 13Gb of data to 130 USB drives. Granted they're all the same (16GB sticks from Microcenter), im getting the same horrid write performance on all of them. I'm averaging about 1.1 MB/second with 10 USB sticks being copied at the same time and my CPU usage is 1-2%. My PC is a beast too, overclocked i7 920, 6GB DDR3 ram, WD Caviar Black hard drive. Also, performance doesnt change when I copy from HD or copy from another USB. If I do one drive only, I can get to about 4MB/s by the math but Win7 under reports its own performance. Its not the hardware, somebody needs to fix the damn drivers.

Have there been any developments regarding this?

I have the same problem. Very poor performance and sometimes the USB devices don't even get recognized. I though it was a hardware issue with my motherboard, but I put in a PCI USB card and got the exact same problems.

I, too, copy large amounts of data to External Hard Drives.

In my situation, I am running 4GB of DDR3 RAM. I have an additional 4,096MB of RAM (via ReadyBoost) on a SanDisk Cruzer Micro enabled to help.

However, I'm hitting similar speeds in terms of file transfer rate.

The problem, from what I've learned in this (and also Vistax64.com forum(s,)) is that it's the fact that it's the USB 2.0 limitation.

Should it be FireWire or eSATA, or even USB 3.0 (as-if anyone can afford that on a > 500GB External Hard Drive,) it'll fly.

I can't speak for Windows XP, as I got away from it a long time ago. It's known for recognizing as much RAM as you'll give it (x86-speaking,) but only truly uses 3GB maximum.

I have never used Windows XP in a native x64 environment. What Windows XP version were you using? Also, have you perhaps disconnected and reconnected the said USB 2.0 drives in different ports on a docking station?

That is a 2nd point; They're more sensitive than they appear. I had problems with (in my case, Western Digital Elements 1.0TB, and 1.5TB) them disappearing & reappearing at will. Other times, if connected (at shut down, restart the next day, etc.,) the issue won't occur. A senior tech replied and stated that it's an under-stated fact that USB 2.0 hard drives (external, I assume,) "don't like" being moved around a lot.

Lastly, Apple mobile devices are process/memory hogs; mdnsresponder (Bonjour,) Apple Mobile Device Service, iTunes Helper, etc., could* be a bit of a blight on your virtual memory. However, your system boasts a healthy amount of RAM!!

I hope this helps.

I too suffer from poor USB performance and in my case it is when using an external WD drive. But testing this problem, I've found that if I switch to the eSATA interface (reboot) and then look at the performance, it is still very poor -- in fact it is now down to 5kb/sec. It may be due to corruption on the disk, but I have run a check disk.
But I've noticed on-going poor performance with external devices on some boxes. At home another WD external drives seems to work fine. Here at work on the computer on my desktop it rarely works properly.
The only differences between home and work are that the external drives are different models and that the computers are different. Both computers run Windows 7 Ultimate x64. The work computer is a desktop and the one at home is a laptop.

I suspect the poor performance is down to some component on the work computer -- either the Intel chipset or the Gigabyte motherboard (its otherwise a fast computer with quad core Q6600 CPU and 4Gb RAM). I suspect Gigabyte.