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USB 2.0 and an external enclosure

S

smitbret

Diamond Member
I have been trying to to hook up a DVD-RW to my computer via an external enclosure, but I haven't been getting Read/Write speeds that I think I should. I finally broke down and bought a Firewire external enclosure and speeds are fine. The enclosure also has a firewire port so I have run off of that, too, but I get the same USB speeds that way as well.

Ok, here's the details. I started with a cheapy AMC USB 2.0 enclosure with a Pioneer DVR-110D. Hooked it up via my onboard USB 2.0 ports to my Abit AN8-SLI with an AMD Athlon 64 x2 4400+ running Windows XP SP2 and 1gb of memory. The only other USB peripheral was my wireless mouse and keyboard. When burning and ripping DVDs, I would consistently get a max speed of 5.8x. I have since swapped out the motherboard for an Abit AN8 32x, added memory, tried add-on PCI cards, tried the different enclosure, swapped out the DVR-110D for a Lite-On DVD-ROM, Benq 1640, Benq 1650, swapped processors to an AMD 3400+ (single-core) on both motherboards. Still getting a max of 5.8x.

Yesterday I purchased a USB external enclosure for an IDE drive that I am using to back files up (speed isn't that important) and it took more than two hours to transfer 160GB of data from my comp to the external DVD, so it's not the drives, enclosures or cables. But back to the DVD-RW, is my reasoning here correct..... Hi-Speed USB 2.0 has a transfer rate of 480mbps? DVD 1x is 11.08mbps, so I am getting a max of 64.26mbps. Which leaves about 415mbps of theoretical bandwidth available, correct? So why am I capping out 99.9% of the time at 5.8x? Am I missing a setting in the bios or something..... what???? Is anyone out there burning or reading DVDs faster than 5.8x with an external enclosure.
-Brett
 
I have a Macally firewire/USB enclosure currently hooked USB 2 and I can get a DVD rip to average 10X. That's with a Liteon something or else 18x I just got. But my USB enclosure is a quality chipset. That's where I'd be looking.
 
480mbps isnt megabytes per second. its mega bits. usb2 480mbs = roughly 60 MB/s but that number is pretty inflated. firewire in my opinion will always be > than usb2.


 
Hmmmm, the 2nd enclosure that I used was a Mapower and I got the same reults as with the other enclosure. It's gotta be an internal or software thing.
-Brett
 
Usually DVD Decrypter or ImgBurn. Occasionally I'll use Nero 7.5.7.0. Same results regardless of the program I used.
-Brett
 
hmmm ok.. let me see if i understand correctly. you were trying to backup data from the external hard drive directly to the external dvd burner?

anyway, i found this Text might give some clue as to your problem

 
Firewire 400 is enough faster on HDD use that it is subjectively faster as well as winning all benchmarks. To get any faster at a reasonable cost, you'd have to go eSATA.

.bh.
 
Not by its claimed data rate it shouldn't be, but I guess USB just has more overhead somewhere. I think it probably has something to do with USB's being designed by committee while Firewire was mostly Apple.

Committee - def: "A life form with eight or more legs and no brain."

.bh.
 
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