external hdd usb 2.0 very poor transfer rates...

[arnoldma]

hi,

i encountered this problem yesterday while using my Philips 500gb external hdd, before that it seemed to be transferring files pretty fast. but i noticed it slowed down right to a halt yesterday.

so i did some speed tests and it came back as 3-4mb/s on both of my internal hard drive transferring to the external! i did a search on google and apparently it's meant to be around 25mb/s transfer rates on a usb 2.0

did almost everything people suggested on the google search and still no luck. any suggestions welcome, thanks!

 

[AbsenceJam]

Fragmentation? Or check it for errors.

 

[rpstewart]

Have you run HDTach or HDTune to check the speed? What size of files have you been transferring - 1Gb of small files takes far longer than a single 1Gb file.

 

[arnoldma]

i just ran hd tune and got the following results:

HD Tune: Hitachi HDT725050VLAT80 Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 27.1 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 31.2 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average :
Access Time :
Burst Rate :
CPU Usage :

seems nice, but i never get that speed when imt ransferring.

i have tried all sort of files, from small files to one large 700mb file. takes about 6mins to transfer one 700mb file. which is about 2mb/s....

i also tried to defrag all my hard drive but its still the same... very slow transfer rates.

are there anything else i can test for?

thanks guys.

 

[dustofnations]

Could look at its SMART data, but it looks normal from those results. Random accesses do tend to be exceptionally slow on mechanical storage devices like HDD's

 

[arnoldma]

thanks guys, but ive discovered something really strange, i thought i'd try and see what it's like copying FROM the external to internal, and the speed is FINE!

its only when i copy from internal to external it slows right down? any ideas? thanks!

 

[arnoldma]

here are some of my test results also, surely the write speed shouldnt be at only 4mb/s?

thanks guys!