Slow transfer rate for USB Hard Drive

Question

I have an Inspiron 2650. I bought a Western Digital USB Hard Drive for backing up files.
According the the WD manual, it should have a transfer rate of 480mps on a USB2.0 port, when I was backing up files, it is more like 4.5mbps (about 30 minutes to transfer 1G)

When the drive was plugged in, the 2650 detected it but gave the following message

"The USB Mass Storage Device will funciton at reduce speed. You must add HI-SPEED USB host controller to this computer to obtain maximum performance"

The 2650 is suppose to have USB2.0, I do not know where the problem is? Is there new USB driver out there which will fix this problem? Thanks.

bacillus · Answer

hmm, are you sure that the 2650 has usb2 & not usb 1.1 ports?

parkdrive · Answer

You are right. I checked with Dell Support, the 2650 indeed has USB1.1 not the USB2.0 that I thought.

Any suggestion for a solution (in order to use my 120G drive effectively?). Would buying an PCMCIA adapter card with USB2.0 work?

bacillus · Answer

yes, you'll need to get an usb2 pcmcia card for usb2 functionality! you'll also need Scott's patch which you can get from http://home.insightbb.com/~scottlandon/

parkdrive · Answer

Thanks. The information really helps. I was planning to buy exactly the Adaptec USBConnet card mentioned in Scott's webpage. Without this information, I might have to go through a lot of 'tech support, contact the other guy' cycle. I bought my 2650 Dec 02, I do not know if Dell had fixed the problem then, but I will report back my adventure for the benefit of others.

parkdrive · Answer

I bought a USB 2.0 PCMCIA Cardbus by Centron. It installed but did not work when I tried to connect it to my WD USB drive. I applied Scott Landon's USB2 Patch as mentioned by bacillus above. The Cardbus worked after the patch was installed. Thanks bacillus & thanks Scott.

The transfer rate is 2X faster (about 9mbps) than the native USB1.1, but it is still not as fast as the advertised 418Mbps. Anymore pointer on this matter will be greatly appreciated.

Red Gene · Answer

Dear,

I have a LAtitude D600 with a D/Port Advanced Port Replicator. I have tried to use the USB2.0 connector on the D/Port Advanced Port Replicator, but got following message:

Add a HI-SPEED HostController to this Computer to obtain maximum performance.

Who can get me out of this info,

Thanks.

ccapozzoli · Answer

I have an Inspiron 8200 with the docking station and I am getting the same problem when I hook up my ext hard drive. Is the docking station USB 2.0?? How can I update the drivers? Thanks

Pineapplef · Answer

So, end up how do you solve the problem? Since I have the same problem as yours.. And I only got 2.4mb/s transfer rate.... And I am USING 7200rpm 8mb cache WD HD...

itsramesh · Answer

USB 2.0's peak transfer rate is 480mbps (read ... 480 megabits per second). So in terms of data transfer its 480/8 = 60 MBps (60 MegaBytes per second).

Well, i have a 120gb external HDD with 8mb cache and 7200rpm and all. But i am getting a speed of 10MBps only.

I don't know the reason why.

Message Edited by itsramesh on 12-03-2003 10:23 PM

yclei · Answer

It may depends on other hardware as well. When I linked my external USB 2.0 hard drive to my desktop (with IDE raid), the data transfer rate is also about 10 to 11 MB per second. When I linked it to my laptop, the transfer rate is about 15 to 16 MB per second.

Desktop (customer-build)

AMX 1800+, 1024MB PC2700 ram, 160G IDE raid (80G HD x 2)

Laptop:

Inspiron 5100, P4 2.66G, 256MB PC2100 ram, 30G HD

External USB 2.0 hard drive (customer-build):

Maxtor 160G HD with 8MB cache, 3.5" external USB 2.0 enclosure

Ps. The data transfer rate here was estimated while actually copying files.

Message Edited by yclei on 12-05-2003 06:11 AM

yclei · Answer

Just used Winbench 99 2.0 to test the data transfer rate on my external USB HD when connected to Inspiron 5100. It seems there is a threshold of 27MB/sec. Comparing this rate to those reported on reviews of external HDs (e.g., http://www6.tomshardware.com/storage/20030915/mobile_storage-15.html), I suspect that the lower transfer rate I got is due to the chip in my enclosure, which supports only UDMA mode 4 (ATA 66, theoretical transfer rate 66MB/sec). Since most HDs nowadays support UDMA mode 5 (ATA 100) or above, it may be better to buy an enclosure explicitly specifing that it would support UDMA mode 5 or above to get a better external HD performance.

godim · Answer

The ATA modes supported by your laptop have nothing to do with an external drive as these standard are only used for internal drives. Then again ATA66 (mode 4) already should support up to 66 Mb/Sec like the standard says.

A few things that may improve perforamnce : 1 - Use windows XP with the service pack 1 installed (this is absolutely necessary for correct USB 2.0 support). 2 - Make sure you have enough ram when using XP (with only 256 Mb RAM) your internal hard drive is doing a lot of chaching and may be the actual bottleneck. 3 - When is the speed of your internal hard disk? Notebook hard disks are suaully much slower than the new modern external hard disks. It is very likely that, when copying files, it is the internal hdd and not the external causing the slowdown. An internal hdd of 4200 rpm can max do 9 Mb/Sec providing it does nothing else (like caching becaue of low memory). My 7200 rpm model can do 30 Mb/sec. Also make sure your internal drive is not nearly full and well defragmented.

Hope these things help out a litle

mrdat · Answer

The Dock for the i8200 is USB 1.1   anyone read specs anymore?

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Slow transfer rate for USB Hard Drive

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