Ask Me Help Desk - Transfer speed from computer to external hard drive

Transfer speed from computer to external hard drive

I just transferred 4GB from a folder on my computer to a USB2 external hard drive and it took 45 minutes! From other transfers, it seems like this is way too long.

1. Is there a "standard" transfer speed that I should expect from a transfer like this?

2. Would doing other things on the computer while it's transferring cause it to slow down? I was doing many things while the transfer was going on.

3. Comparing various external hard drives (all USB2), will some just be better - and transfer faster - than others?

Thanks!

Is your computer's USB v2 as well? If not, it doesn't matter if the hard drive is USB2, you will only get speed of USB1.1.

Doing other things on your computer involving disk operations (such as working in files, saving, moving, etc) will hamper the performance of a copy. The hard disk head would need to move back and forth between the data you're a copying and the data you are working with.

Hard disks run at different speeds: 5400, 7200, and 10,000 RPM are common. Also, on-board cache will make a difference in performance.

Hi Rick,

As Northwind_Dagas says, if you only have usb 1 on your PC you will get slow speeds.

4gb = 4000mb = 32000mbits (approx)
at 45 minutes you are getting 32000/45/60 = 11.85 mbits/second.
this means you are using a usb 1 connection (12mbits/sec) whereas if you have a usb 2 connection you could get up to 480 mbits/sec = 1.1minutes. But as ND says above other factors will probably stop you getting the full quoted speed of usb2.

I reconed on about 30 secs for about 600mb, so that would give you a time for 4gb of about 3-4 minutes.

Hmmm. Would have sworn I've got usb2 on the computer, but will check under the hood to be sure.

Doing some mass moving here at home on usb2 laptop and it's FLYING!

... will definitely have to check out that usb card @ work...

I'm back at work now...
The computer (P4, 2GH, 736MB Ram) is factory usb 1.0 - but I added a USB 2.0 card.

I did 2 test copies of a 663MB folder from My Docs to an external HD (100GB, 5400RPM).

From the USB 1.0 port it took 13 min 0 seconds.
From the USB 2.0 port it took 5 min 11 seconds.

... so just 17mbps for the transfer via the 2.0 port!

Is there anything I can do to improve the performance, or am I just stuck with this. Is it because of my older motherboard?

Will tapping on the processor with a ball pien hammer help :( :p

Thanks!

How fast does it copy the folder to another folder on your internal hard drive? Is you're my docs folder located on your local machine? Sometimes they will be on the network server (right click & properties to find out) which could also slow down performance. Also try temporarily turning off your antivirus (if you're sure of the files of course)

Thanks, Stu.

Ugh. This is not looking good:

Yes, My Docs is on local machine. No network.

With Norton Internet Security Enabled, it was 1/3rd of the way through the copy after 3 minutes... and with NIS disabled was 1/3rd of the way through after 2 minutes.

That just doesn't make sense does it? Shouldn't local file/folder moves/copys go lickety split?

You didn't say how fast the transfer was from c: to c: (different folder) that should tell you if the problems with your PC or the link. I suppose if the files being copied are very fragmented they could cause a delay.

Is your computer fast otherwise, if the machine's struggling for free ram for whatever reason that could slow the process down.

Oops... sorry. The times I was quoting were for the same 663MB folder from My Docs to right under C:. Both with and without NIS I only let it go about 1/3rd of the way through the copy just to get an idea of the speed... so it was looking like about 6 minutes for the copy with NIS disabled and 9 minutes with it enabled.

Generally speaking, I'd call the computer fast... I've had no performance issues prior to noticing this one... but of course I don't know how to put "seems fast enough" into technical language.

... think it would be worth looking into any of the variety of diagnosis software that's available? I'd put a few bucks into it if I thought it could make a significant improvement.

Check with your cable that's connected to the hard drive... makes sure it's a USB 2.0 "HIGH SPEED"... or make sure you have a HIGH SPEED USB 2.0 hard drive

There are differences in USB 2.0 products that manufacturers don't want you to know...

This was at a site I was reading about that can explain better...

"""Unfortunately, the phrase "USB 2.0" does not necessarily mean 480Mbps of throughput. USB 2.0 now has three different signaling rates: Low Speed (1.5Mbps), Full Speed (12Mbps), and Hi-Speed (480Mbps). The marketing and advertising departments of product manufacturers like to put the words "USB 2.0" on all of their product packages. This can be really deceptive since most consumers will see USB 2.0 and compare it to an older product with the USB 1.1 moniker and think "USB2 must be better than USB 1.1!" Naturally, the consumer is unaware of the difference between "Full Speed" and "High Speed" (this is something akin to the old naming snafu with floppy disks: does "double density" or "high density" hold more?).""""

This explains why my mp3 transfer speed to a 1GB card is bad... I didn't have usb 2.0 high speed cable

So your USB cable or hard drive may not be utilizing the USB 2.0 HIGH SPEED connection and that's y you are transferring slowly

Just because it says USB 2.0 doesn't necessarily promise transferring fast anymore... which sucks

Hey, never thought of the cable itself. Yes, the hd is usb 2.0. I'll check the cable when I get back to the office.

With the slow transfer rate from c: to c:, though, I'll have to guess something is amiss elsewhere, too...

If you have slow trasnfer from :c>:c then that's another issue...
To me it sounds like you got some major cpu robbing program running in the background...

How much memory is installed on your system?is spyware running in background?is there a disk defrag program running?what programs are running when you ctrl-alt-del?
When the last time you defragged and did cleanup?

I'm thinking you might have a spyware issue personally because those have been known to slow a computer to a crawl when doing anything..

My suggestions
Do a spyware check
Do a defrag and cleanup
Do a antivirus check
Drag and drop instead of copy and paste(for some weird reason mine transfers faster if I drag instead of cut)
Check version of USB 2.0 equipment
Transfer in safe mode if possible
Get the newest drivers for USB 2.0 card
Make sure all features on USB addon card are double checked

I'm tapped... good luck hopefully you get running at the right speed

I have used this program quite recently http://www.iobit.com/WindowsCare.htm I didn't let it mess around with the services but there is a restore function anyway, seems to help speed up some settings!

Also, I would look at your IDE controller driver and update if possible. Also have a look at event viewer to see if there are any error messages that might look suspicious.

By the way, I didn't get the latest notification on this thread after my last post - had to find it myself!

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Tommy: I'm virus, spyware and fragmentation free. My testing is with no other apps running. With cntrl-alt-delete nothing showing under Apps, but a whole list of stuff showing under Processes...

In double checking the drivers for the USB 2.0 card, Windows tells me they can't find a better driver.

I'm assuming that the USB card is the "USB 2.0 Root Hub" shown below. Is that correct?

Stu: Thanks, I'll try the WindowsCare app to see what it shows... and maybe even try a couple of the different "tune up" apps I see at download.com, too.

Try booting into Safe Mode and doing C: to C: transfers to see if the speed is better - if yes then you do have some CPU robbing processes running when normal booting.

Clearly I have issues. Transferring this 663MB folder (in Safe Mode) from My Docs to C: took 9 min 15 seconds.

Will have to see what WindowsCare, et al turns up.

I do not think copying files from C to C is going to show your best performance. Similar to before when I stated doing hard drive functions during a copy will cause it to be slower, the same thing is happening when you copy files on the drive to another location on the same drive.

The hard drive head is moving back and forth from where the data is and where the data is being copied to.

You will find the best performance copying between two hard disk on separate IDE channels. I do not think your C to C copy will give any kind of indication as to what you should expect to see when you copy to your external USB drive.

Y'know, I was wondering about that as I recognized that the copy from my computer to the external HD went a lot faster (albiet too slow for usb2) than the copy from c to c.

I downloaded 2 "optimization" utilities:
TuneUpUtilities 2006 and Advanced Windows Care.

I ran the analyzer for AWC and it found 48 "problems". I then ran the analyzer for TUU and it found a couple thousand line items... so I ran the "Repair" function on it.

... then I re-ran the AWC analyzer and it found the same 48 "problems".

... so is "optimal performance" just an opinion? Seems very odd that AWC would show no change after such a drastic "optimization" by another far more intensive utility.

Oh well, still doing some playing around, then will re-try my test copies from my local HD to an external.

I agree that the c to c copy is not the optimal performance you can get, however it does highlight the failing. My computer will copy 690Mb in about 35 seconds from c to c, Ricks is taking at least ten times longer than this therefore there is a problem with data transfer.

Probably the time to transfer data between c and usb2 is slightly more quick than c to c. That is not the point however, we are trying to identify the bottleneck in the system and it is higlighted with this c to c test.

As far as the two optimisers go, they must be diagnosing different things so yes I suppose optimisation is in the eye of the developer!

Rick, I would also test your ram and hard disk on this system. Did you notice anything funny in the event viewer?

I do not see anything called Event Viewer in Advanced Windows Care.

Are you referring to the page showing the summary of the problems it found?

Quote:

Originally Posted by rickj

I do not see anything called Event Viewer in Advanced Windows Care.

Are you referring to the page showing the summary of the problems it found?

Event Viewer:
Right-click My Computer icon, select Manage, Event Viewer is there.

Sorry Rick, I should have been clearer on this.

Event viewer is an inbuilt function of Windows 2000/xp etc that records various information, errors and warnings from the system. To view it, right click "my Computer" and select "manage" - you will find event viewer under "system tools" - check the system log for any errors that seem pertinent either disk or memory etc or anything that coincides with the timing of your test.

Perhaps a benchmark would be a good tool for measuring your speed here.

http://www.freshdevices.com/benchmark_software.html

Also, do you know the model of your internal hard disk? If not, Belarc Advisor could tell you then we could look up specifications and see what is "should" be doing rather than try to guess based on other systems' performance.

Good suggestion ND, its too easy to expect different machines to perform the same.

Thanks guys. OK, nothing odd stood out in Event Manager, but I do see something odd re my memory use and availability.

With nothing running I've only got 60% of my memory available, and TuneUpUtilities says ccapp.exe is using an abnormally high amount of memory.

... off to check out freshdevices.com

True, Rick could be running XP on a PIII w/ 128MB and a 6GB HD.
:D

PS before I go too far:

Do y'all think that it might be just as efficient to do a format and see how things go with a clean install of windows and the few important apps I run?

PS; here is my internal hard drive:
Maxtor 4D040H2 [Hard drive] (40.98 GB) -- drive 0, s/n D24TN3CE, rev DAH017K0, SMART Status: Healthy

Sure, take the easy way out.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rickj

With nothing running I've only got 60% of my memory available, and TuneUpUtilities says ccapp.exe is using an abnormally high amount of memory.

That's Norton's virus scan.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rickj

PS; here is my internal hard drive:
Maxtor 4D040H2 [Hard drive] (40.98 GB) -- drive 0, s/n D24TN3CE, rev DAH017K0, SMART Status: Healthy

That drive is 5400 RPM, with 2 MB Cache, ATA-100. Not a real big performer.

Ideally, for an IDE drive, you'd have 7200 RPM, with 8MB cache, ATA-133.

Quote:

Originally Posted by NeedKarma

Sure, take the easy way out.

Lol!

...

The memory thing just does not seem right. I've got 736MB of RAM.

With NIS disabled and nothing else running my free memory is 63%
I then enable NIS and it stays the same.
I then open MailWasher, which I always want running, and it goes down to 61%
With FF running and being on this site I'm down to 56%

Do these numbers really sound normal?

As for the whimpy HD, glad to hear that since HDs are pretty cheap.

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Quote:

Originally Posted by NeedKarma

True, Rick could be running XP on a PIII w/ 128MB and a 6GB HD.
:D

No, I have a 486SX. Just bought it last week and was told it's state of the art. Did I get duped? :p

I'll do a transfer test myself on my home system tonight and post the results. I suspect our setups are similar:
P1.4 / 512MB / 120 GB [make and model TBD]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rickj

The memory thing just does not seem right. I've got 736MB of RAM.

....

Do these numbers really sound normal?

I agree it sounds high. If you disable the real time scan for Norton, what does your memory usage look like?

Isn't disabling NIS altogether the same thing as disabling the realtime scan?

... I did think that was weird that I had 63% available whether it was enabled or not.

I'm going to try the optimizer for the ccapp issue and see what happens...

Quote:

Originally Posted by rickj

Isn't disabling NIS altogether the same thing as disabling the realtime scan?

...I did think that was weird that I had 63% available whether it was enabled or not.

Whoops! I didn't make the connection that NIS = Norton Internet Security.

What else is using large amounts of memory? If you look in the Task Manager, under Processes, you can see the amount of memory each process is using.

Well first let me say that I did the Memory optimization (which moved stuff into the paging file... whatever that means) and now I'm at 67% free with NIS enabled, mailwasher running and surfing this site.

Under Task Manager Processes I've got a slew of stuff. The big hitters are

Firefox 30284 K
Mailwasher 23772
Explorer.exe 14168
Svchost.exe 10940
Ccapp.exe 11312

All others are under 5 digits.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rickj

Under Task Manager Processes I've got a slew of stuff. The big hitters are

firefox 30284 K
mailwasher 23772
explorer.exe 14168
svchost.exe 10940
ccapp.exe 11312

all others are under 5 digits.

Those all seem to be in check.

Thanks, ND. I'm now running through the rest of the optimization stuff. If it does not make a significant change in my transfer speeds, I'll run off to get a new HD and do a fresh install of windows then the apps I run.

Report:
I transferred 700MB from one physical drive (older maxtor 60GB IDE) to another physical drive (newer Maxtor 120GB IDE, on same cable), it took about 45-50 seconds. I don't have NIS, I use AVG and ZoneAlarm.

Note: my processor is 2.4Ghz not 1.4 as previously mentioned.