Computer response slow when copying from HD to External

[gizbug]

Any ideas what would cause my i5 system to have delayed responses / slowness when copying large files from hard drive to external hd? Seems odd, as both hd's are SATA
Using latest Intel INF drivers. No overclock.

 

[gizbug]

Would this be due to the fact I have AHCI enabled in bios?

 

[Slugbait]

Originally posted by: gizbug
Would this be due to the fact I have AHCI enabled in bios?

Nope.

Firewire should not have any delayed responses or slowness when copying large files. It might be the chipset of the external enclosure, but it would have to be a really lousy one to see those kind of symptoms. And it's highly unlikely that it's due to the Firewire cable. You might try dropping the hard drive into a different external enclosure.

 

[gizbug]

Firewire? Its USB.

 

[corkyg]

Originally posted by: gizbug
Firewire? Its USB.

And that is your bottleneck. USB is a drag. Put in a eSATA card and run an eSATA external - it is truly 4-5 times faster.

 

[AzKGTR]

LoL slow USB -> so get esata are you serious?

I have a similar problem could be related. I have various USB storage devices, Corsair 8GB mini, 32GB & 16GB, 1TB hdds ext etc. Every now and then i notice that my USB transfer speed slow right down to 2-3MB/s. When i first loaded up windows 7 RTM x64bit with all the drivers installed i could get atleast 30MB/s transfer speed and i tested this with 700MB files and 30MB files and so on. I was sold with windows 7 and was planning to upgrade my own machine at home.

With this new rig i built for me girlfriend it was great until i tried some leeching of me mates ext hdd and it slowed right down to 2-3MB/s. I decided to reboot the pc and i was able to get upto 40MB/s but after a few hours of idle and light use the transfer speeds again dropped down to 2-3MB/s. I turned off Drive indexing and still the same. Tried with one USB hdd and same and the rear USB ports i will give it a go as well. Im gonna do more research and see what else i can find..hopefully intel updated INF drivers or bios from gigabyte maybe? or maybe its jus windows 7 RTM bugs needed to be fixed. Its a hassle to restart the PC every few hours so i can get fast USB transfer speeds. Atleast with Vista i didnt need to reboot for average USB transfers speeds tho it was a crap OS in general

Intel i5 750 - stock
2x2DDR2 COrsair XMS
Gigabyte UD3 P55 mobo
CM Storm Scout case
CM 550 watt psu
windows 7 RTM x64
WD 808GBs hdd

 

[Slugbait]

Sustained transfer rate of Hi-Speed USB 2.0 hovers around 250Mbps, not even close to 480Mbps.

Not all USB 2.0 devices are equal, simply because some products advertised as USB 2.0 devices are not ?Hi-Speed? and thus are fully incapable of the theoretical 480Mbps bandwidth?in fact, many of those products are actually ?Full-Speed? devices, which is only 12Mbps, or equal to USB 1.1 speeds.

The USB maximum data rate is shared amongst all attached devices. In other words, the more devices that are attached, the slower each one of them will go. After all the devices are connected, you may or may not perceptively notice much performance degradation on a Hi-Speed 2.0 device, but degraded performance of attached USB 1.1 devices will be especially noticeable.

Each stacked pair of connections share a single USB Root Hub, which means that if you have both of these ports occupied by devices, those devices will share the bandwidth of that individual root hub.

Then there is the issue of isochronous USB devices, such as webcams, which will reserve a large portion of bandwidth and bleed dry the bandwidth that other, non-isochronous devices would otherwise get to use, reducing their bandwidth performance even more. Not too much of an issue if the drivers for a particular ISO device is well-written...huge issue if they aren't.

If you have two high-use, high-bandwidth devices, attempt to connect them to ports that are each served by individual EHCI controllers. For example, connect your external hard drive to the first USB 2.0 port, and the webcam to the seventh USB 2.0 port.

 

[AzKGTR]

sigh....
i feel like a 2 yr old now. Anywho..its bascially this MY USB devices transfer upto 40MB/s when transferring a 11GB file or 2-5GB of smaller files either .rar or .avi and so on on Vista/Windows 7/ OSX & win XP. but on the W7 box with this P55 chipset after a few hours of use or idle when trying to copy from USB to PC it slows right down to 2-3MB but after a reboot the same files go back upto 40MB/s+. Last night i was happy to see for the first time that the windows 7 can handle the USB 2.0 bandwidth. After a restart i was able to get transfer speeds in total of 55MB/s which is close to 480Mbps. But that was with 2x different USB hdds connected on the same USB channels. They would swap between 30MB/s and the other @ 25MB/s. So i want to know if anyone else with similar specs P55 chipset+windows 7 is having ths same issue. I know the limitation of USB and USB drives and hdds are different and so on. Thats why i was testing with different USB devices before i posted. The only thing i havent tested is the UDES system of the gigabyte mobo if i can turn off the power saving features to see if this helps.