USB HDDs slow on my PC?

Markus123 · 13 May 2008 at 17:56

Hey All,

Does anyone have any idea what could be causing External USB HDDs to run significantly slower on my PC compared to my laptop?

I just tested 4 different USB HDDs several times using HD Tune first on the desktop, then the laptop, the laptop averaged 30MB/sec while the PC only got 12MB/sec. Both have USB 2.0 Ports, no extra USB devices plugged in (not even the mouse) and running clean installs of XP Pro SP3.

The PC is a crappy pre-built thing but surely it shouldn't cause that much difference? By the way I'm not bothered about speed so please don't give an answer being "use eSata or firewire" I'm just curious at to why there would be such a big difference.

Zefan · 13 May 2008 at 17:58

My mate had a problem a while back with his USB HDD, he said it was something to do with it being set to low power/storage mode rather than system.

Not a clue apart from that

bledd · 15 May 2008 at 14:19

are the rear ports slow too?

look in the bios for settings, or check for a bios update from hp

Markus123 · 15 May 2008 at 22:52

Hi, Thanks for the replies.

As far as I know the drive(s) aren't in any kind of low-power mode, also it has the latest BIOS and yeah the rear ports only get ~12MB/s too.

pingwing · 16 May 2008 at 03:49

Ah k8 ati chipset, officially the worst USB performance in the known world!

I have it on my laptop up here and it is cringingly slow (as ati just couldnt do a working driver with any performance)

Whats your laptop specs?

Markus123 · 16 May 2008 at 11:29

Thanks - guess that'll be what the problem is then so nothing I can do about it, oh well

Laptops a Vostro 1500, T7250, 3GB, (PM965 ?) chipset.

bledd · 16 May 2008 at 12:51

crikey, learn something new i guess!

whack in a usb2 pci card, might be able to hook up the front ports to it too (with a bit of botching/cutting)