External HD Transfer Question....

Alty · 11 Nov 2006 at 12:34

Just bought a 320Gb seagate external hard disk after seein it advertised on TV and thought it would be ideal for backing up my files currently on my PC, namely films and music. I have plugged it in and it supports USB2 but when I transfer files I gotta say its bloomin slow and not what I expected at all. It's taking about 5-7 mins to transfer a 700mb file. Does this sound right? Also when I'm transferring files it slows down the rest of my system to a snails pace. I'm new to the whole external hard disk scene but if this is the norm then I am severely disappointed - what experiences are the rest of you guys havin?

fumbles · 11 Nov 2006 at 13:26

The USB2.0 is the bottleneck there. Although it says it's fast, compared to SATA it just doesnt cut it. Although 5 minutes seems a bit long even for USB.

rpstewart · 11 Nov 2006 at 13:38

Certainly sounds awful slow for USB2, you should be getting somewhere about 15MB/s or 700Mb in about 45s. I'm guessing that it's running at USB1 speed, especially if you're getting high CPU usage at the same time.

The question of course is what needs done to sort it....

What model of motherboard are you using?

sprognak · 12 Nov 2006 at 08:41

Sounds a little like an NForce chipset/Windows SP2 USB2 bug. Have a look on the mobo manufacturers website for the latest USB drivers...

sprognak · 12 Nov 2006 at 08:45

And 7 minutes for 700Mb equates to 11.35-12.5 Megabits per second. That's definately USB-1 speed.

Alty · 14 Nov 2006 at 10:43

Just a lil update for you all, I forgot to mention that the hard drive I was transferring files from was an IDE drive and was slowing the whole system down during the process. I then tried transferring files from one of my SATA drives and must say that the whole speed issue was a marked improvement and doesnt lag the system up at all compared to the IDE hard drives. All I do now is back up my IDE hard disks overnight while I'm alseep. I can't wait to jus get rid of IDE altogether believe you me!!

rpstewart · 14 Nov 2006 at 10:58

Hmm, take a look at the IDE controller entry in Device Manager, it may well be operating in PIO mode which would explain the high CPU usage and slow transfers.