I have a 750GB external hard drive with both USB 2.0 and eSATA interfaces. The drive itself is WD (WD7500AAKS) and the enclosure is made by "Cavalry" (came with the drive pre-installed).
When I first hooked up the drive and backed up some files, transfers were nice and speedy through eSATA. Since that time, the drive has been unplugged and unused. Hooked it back up again this week and a few initial transfers were quick, then suddenly everything bogged WAY down.
Benchmarking results using HD Tune suggest that all is well. Using the eSATA interface, HD Tune shows 77MB/s average, 99MB/s burst, and 13ms access time, all of which seem great to me. However, when attempting real-world file transfers, the rates are now absurdly slow (on the order of 1 to 2MB/s). This started when the drive still had 75% free space.
I attempted a test transfer tonight of 9.13 GB (approx. 1,500 files) and had to cancel after passing the 60 minute mark (hadn't even made it through 5GB in that time).
The USB 2.0 interface has the same problem.
I have tried transferring from two different internal drives -- one SATA and one PATA, and the real-world transfer speeds continue to bog at unusable speeds of less than 2MB/s. Both internal drives also test healthy in HD Tune.
As an extra test, I tried transferring about 7GB of files from the same internal drives to an 8GB flash drive (Class 6 SDHC, through USB 2.0), and things were as speedy as one could hope for (over 15MB/s). Transfers from internal drive to internal drive are also fast.
I've tried rebooting multiple times, defragmenting and running tests on all drives, tried both USB2.0 and eSATA, checked all cables multiple times....
What's going on here? Why do the HD Tune results look so good for the external drive while the real-world attempts fall flat? CPU usage during transfers is very low (under 5%) and I checked the Task Manager to confirm that no programs were hogging memory.
The drive came pre-formatted NTFS. I tried reformatting the whole drive on the chance that something went awry in the initial formatting, but no dice -- results were unchanged.
The system is running Windows XP SP2. The main internal drive is a WD 7200 RPM SATA drive.
Any suggestions for additional troubleshooting steps?
I'd like to take the external drive out of the enclosure and hook it up internally to test transfer speeds that way, but doing so will invalidate the warranty (which is still good for a few months), so I can't do that yet.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
When I first hooked up the drive and backed up some files, transfers were nice and speedy through eSATA. Since that time, the drive has been unplugged and unused. Hooked it back up again this week and a few initial transfers were quick, then suddenly everything bogged WAY down.
Benchmarking results using HD Tune suggest that all is well. Using the eSATA interface, HD Tune shows 77MB/s average, 99MB/s burst, and 13ms access time, all of which seem great to me. However, when attempting real-world file transfers, the rates are now absurdly slow (on the order of 1 to 2MB/s). This started when the drive still had 75% free space.
I attempted a test transfer tonight of 9.13 GB (approx. 1,500 files) and had to cancel after passing the 60 minute mark (hadn't even made it through 5GB in that time).
The USB 2.0 interface has the same problem.
I have tried transferring from two different internal drives -- one SATA and one PATA, and the real-world transfer speeds continue to bog at unusable speeds of less than 2MB/s. Both internal drives also test healthy in HD Tune.
As an extra test, I tried transferring about 7GB of files from the same internal drives to an 8GB flash drive (Class 6 SDHC, through USB 2.0), and things were as speedy as one could hope for (over 15MB/s). Transfers from internal drive to internal drive are also fast.
I've tried rebooting multiple times, defragmenting and running tests on all drives, tried both USB2.0 and eSATA, checked all cables multiple times....
What's going on here? Why do the HD Tune results look so good for the external drive while the real-world attempts fall flat? CPU usage during transfers is very low (under 5%) and I checked the Task Manager to confirm that no programs were hogging memory.
The drive came pre-formatted NTFS. I tried reformatting the whole drive on the chance that something went awry in the initial formatting, but no dice -- results were unchanged.
The system is running Windows XP SP2. The main internal drive is a WD 7200 RPM SATA drive.
Any suggestions for additional troubleshooting steps?
I'd like to take the external drive out of the enclosure and hook it up internally to test transfer speeds that way, but doing so will invalidate the warranty (which is still good for a few months), so I can't do that yet.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
