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What is the normal transfer speed for usb ext hdd?

Pepsei

Pepsei

Lifer
So I just got the WD element 1.5 TB external hdd from dell via UPS. a good thing since my RC windows 7 is going to expire soon, need to move about 500 gig of storage off of it to put full version on it.

it is telling me that it'd take about 14+ hours at 19 MB/sec is this normal?
D:
 
Pepsei said:
So I just got the WD element 1.5 TB external hdd from dell via UPS. a good thing since my RC windows 7 is going to expire soon, need to move about 500 gig of storage off of it to put full version on it.

it is telling me that it'd take about 14+ hours at 19 MB/sec is this normal?
D:
Click to expand...

Sadly, yes. It should be much more....considering the 480Mbps rate (I understand overhead, etc) that USB 2.0 runs at but that is about the same in my experience. Make sure to unhook as many other USB items as you can as I've had the rate go up quite a bit once the USB system was unloaded. That's the very reason that I made sure to get a USB/eSATA docking stating and use eSATA where possible.
 
20-28MB/s throughput, in reality. The 480Mbps is raw bandwidth, and not throughput. Throughput is what you can actually send/receive, excluding overhead. And the overhead of USB is huge, because of its many features and flexibility.

You would want either USB 3.0 (4,8Gbps raw bandwidth, 10 times as much) or eSATA (150MB/s or 300MB/s) same as SATA. eSATA would have lower latencies than USB 3.0; but both should be very fast to transfer large amounts of data on removable media.
 
Using a large single file about 36MB/S reading FROM the drive and about 28MB/S writing TO the drive is what I see...

If you have thousands of tiny files transfers plummet. This happens regardless of the interface.
 
n7 said:
This is why you use eSATA :hmm:

USB is sooo slow.
Click to expand...

Overall transfer will become I/O limited (not interface limited) when lots of tiny files are involved. The only way to speed this up is by having faster drives on each end.
 
Rubycon said:
Overall transfer will become I/O limited (not interface limited) when lots of tiny files are involved. The only way to speed this up is by having faster drives on each end.
Click to expand...

Not arguing there, but IME, even w/ smaller files, eSATA is still far superior to USB, usually nearly doubling copy speeds for me, even with my crappier HDDs.
 
It's rather unfortunate that eSATA isn't nearly as prolific as USB 2.0. And when ext HDDs are on sale, it's usually the USB 2.0 ones. But at this point, I'll be waiting for USB 3.0 rather than getting an eSATA ext HDD.
 
fffblackmage said:
It's rather unfortunate that eSATA isn't nearly as prolific as USB 2.0. And when ext HDDs are on sale, it's usually the USB 2.0 ones. But at this point, I'll be waiting for USB 3.0 rather than getting an eSATA ext HDD.
Click to expand...

Yeah USB 3.0 will be a welcome change.

I personally dislike the majority of external drive enclosures, so i got my own enclosure (eSATA), & have swapped out HDDs in it over the years.

I'd say that a good enclosure + internal HDD (make your own external) is worth the extra few bux over a cheap external on sale, but that's just me.

I also have the lovely Vantec toaster which i find extremely convenient/handy.
 
I'd say that a good enclosure + internal HDD (make your own external) is worth the extra few bux over a cheap external on sale..
Click to expand...

Pretty much a no brainer when you consider that removing the drive for troubleshooting will void the warranty on a premade and that many times the drives in those enclosures are different (read cheaper) than those sold as seperates.
 
n7 said:
Not arguing there, but IME, even w/ smaller files, eSATA is still far superior to USB, usually nearly doubling copy speeds for me, even with my crappier HDDs.
Click to expand...

Yes it is faster until you reach the turning point. 😉

Personally I wish ESATA would die. Hopefully USB 3.0 makes this happen.
 
thanks for all the tips.

i rebooted my computer and everything picked up.. by a little, should be able to finish copying everything tonight.
 
This was a good read. I just considered my options for external storage and yesterday ordered a WD green 1.5 Tb drive to go in a Vantec NexStar external USB/esata enclosure. Sounds like I actually guessed right for a change. 😉 I hope.
 
just remember the green is still 5400/7200'ish slower. if you are moving a ton of data it will take hours longer 🙂
 
Emulex said:
just remember the green is still 5400/7200'ish slower. if you are moving a ton of data it will take hours longer 🙂
Click to expand...

True. But for an external enclosure, I don't want it to run any hotter than necessary. Slow. cool, and long running beats fast, hot and failed. And, it shouldn't be any slower that the current Seagate IDE 300 GB drive it will supplement.
 
Rubycon said:
Yes it is faster until you reach the turning point. 😉

Personally I wish ESATA would die. Hopefully USB 3.0 makes this happen.
Click to expand...

how does something that never really took off "die". Really, wouldn't it have to be dominant to even be worth worrying about it going away?

firewire niche with PCs, for example
 
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