What's USB speed for drives

canton_kid · Post by **canton_kid** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 7:26 pm

How fast is USB2 for drives supposed to be?
I mean in minutes, how long to transfer 10M, 100MB, 1GIG etc?

I have a Sata to USB enclosure and thumb drives and used 3 systems. It just seems USB is so slow.

What should be faster, my wireless network card or USB?
Did I get my Bytes and Bites mixed up? 54MB for wireless, 480Mb for USB?
I thought I read the Lan 100 was slower for the Sata enclosure than the USB, it has both connections, but I can certainly transfer files much faster over lan, even with my 54Mb wireless card so 100 cable contection should be even faster but I have not tried the lan connection yet.

Latter when I get another LARGE drive I'll put it on the network hub as a server drive for all the system to access. For now I needed the drive I had for the system I just built so I put the case back in the box.

TheSovereign · Post by **TheSovereign** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 7:33 pm

20-30 megabytes per second u wont get more than that realistically. ive seen state of the industry equipment do 32 megabytes per second only saw that once though
theoretical max is 60 megabytes per second....however thats not gonna happen
the 480 is megabits aka divide that by 8 and in a perfect world thats megabytes

lan speeds are as follows in a perfect world
10 megabit lan = 1.2 megabytes per second
54 meg wireless fits in here somewhere - HALVE what the number is. 11b was 11 megabits aka 5.5 in reality so 54 is actually 27
100 megabit lan = 12 megabytes per second
USB2 hard disk fits somewhere here
1 gig lan = 120 megabytes per second (no hard disk on earth can do this YET, though raids can handle this easily) <-------------------------- LOOK
10 gig lan = 1.2 gigabytes per second, this actually exists and is in use currently. BFR's so far

go forth young one and propagate this knowledge!

canton_kid · Post by **canton_kid** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 9:45 pm

TheSovereign wrote:20-30 megabytes per second u wont get more than that realistically. ive seen state of the industry equipment do 32 megabytes per second only saw that once though
theoretical max is 60 megabytes per second....however thats not gonna happen
the 480 is megabits aka divide that by 8 and in a perfect world thats megabytes

lan speeds are as follows in a perfect world
10 megabit lan = 1.2 megabytes per second
54 meg wireless fits in here somewhere - HALVE what the number is. 11b was 11 megabits aka 5.5 in reality so 54 is actually 27
100 megabit lan = 12 megabytes per second
USB2 hard disk fits somewhere here
1 gig lan = 120 megabytes per second (no hard disk on earth can do this YET, though raids can handle this easily) <-------------------------- LOOK
10 gig lan = 1.2 gigabytes per second, this actually exists and is in use currently. BFR's so far

go forth young one and propagate this knowledge!

SO

100 megabit lan = 12 megabytes per second
USB2 hard disk fits somewhere here

12MB X 60seconds = 720Megabytes, thus it should take less than one minute to transfer a 670MB file right.
I have a 670mb file, I'll give it shot and see how long it takes again on USB, maybe it was close to a minute but I think it was allot longer.

670 / 12 = 56seconds ??

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 12:21 am

If it's dramatically slow then chances are your port is not running at USB 2.0. USB 1.1 is very slow.

ZYFER · Post by **ZYFER** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 5:24 am

Don't forget that USB utilizes the CPU. If the system has a pretty weak processor like an old Celeron or something, it isn't going to transfer as fast as one with a Core 2 Duo. Speeds also depend on the device transferring. Some external enclosures for hard drives are just slow, flash drives can have slower transfer speeds as well depending on how cheap they are and the memory that is used for them.
Your wireless card is likely to operate far slower. Remember that USB doesn't have the same issues with interference and doesn't have to resend information like wireless can. Also, depending upon your setup, the encryption can easily slow down the transfer speeds. Wireless connections can also drop in the middle of a transfer, (very annoying)

Don't forget it is quite obviously going to take you awhile to transfer many small files than one large file, so take that into consideration.

I did a test on my system, (Core 2 Duo @ 3Ghz) it took 28 seconds to transfer a 699mb file from the computer to the hard drive and it took 25 seconds to transfer the same file from the external back to the computer. So the speed was about 24.96 megabytes/sec (199.68 megabits/sec) to transfer from the computer to the external and it was 27.96 megabytes/sec (223.68 megabits/sec) from the external to the computer.

I ran this test on another system, both of these have USB2 by the way. This test was done on an old laptop with a Celeron 2.4ghz processor and these are the results:

73 seconds from the computer to the external
That is 9.58 megabytes/sec (76.54 megabits/sec)

68 seconds fromm the external to the computer
That is 10.28 megabytes/sec (82.24 megabits/sec)

As you can see, there are differences going from system to system. The results here are not perfectly scientific as the faster desktop had multiple things running in the background where the laptop had next to nothing in comparison. Even so, the desktop yielded far better results in the transfer.

The external in this test was a USB SATA notebook hard drive. A faster desktop drive would likely provide better performance, but there is no guarantee of that for older computers.

Even so, the USB transfer while can be slow at times in older computers, it provides a more reliable transfer method than a wireless connection for sure. It is certain that for faster computers, USB would be the faster method compared to wireless or a 10/100 network. a Gigabit or faster network though leaves something to further test.

Please note, all network speeds are roughly meant in terms of bits, so Mb is Megabits, Kb is Kilobits. When you see ISP mentioning speeds, it is in bits not bytes. USB speeds are referred in the same way. USB2 is 480 Megabits and USB1.1 is 12 Megabits. These are ofcourse theoreticals maximums not guaranteed speeds.

There simply is no way to give an exact number of transfer speeds between two computers for any transfer method as there are far too many variables which can affect the transfer speed. I could say it could take roughly so-so long, the chance of being exactly right is pretty slim.

TheSovereign · Post by **TheSovereign** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 8:32 am

canton_kid wrote:SO

12MB X 60seconds = 720Megabytes, thus it should take less than one minute to transfer a 670MB file right.
I have a 670mb file, I'll give it shot and see how long it takes again on USB, maybe it was close to a minute but I think it was allot longer.

670 / 12 = 56seconds ??

actually if u read the first part of what i wrote
i said 20 to 30 meg per second for a usb hard drive
its around 7-8 megabytes per second for a 100 mb lan

so 670 megabytes should take between 1 min 30 to 1 min 20 seconds

canton_kid · Post by **canton_kid** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 9:13 am

Thanks for the replies, I'll be doing some checking on my systems.

I just transfered a folder of 11 files that totaled 650Megs from my Corsair 4gig thumb drive and it took about 11 minutes. I timed it, 7:54 start and 8:05 end, so give or take a minute.

Well I guess that explains why I thought my Lan was so much faster than my USB, LOL

My newest system I just checked and it did the same files in a few seconds, around 25seconds maybe. I may not have had the correct drivers or Bios set up right before on this system. As for the other two systems I bet it's driver are bad, I been moving stuff around again.

canton_kid · Post by **canton_kid** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 9:46 am

ZYFER wrote: did a test on my system, (Core 2 Duo @ 3Ghz) it took 28 seconds to transfer a 699mb file from the computer to the hard drive and it took 25 seconds to transfer the same file from the external back to the computer. So the speed was about 24.96 megabytes/sec (199.68 megabits/sec) to transfer from the computer to the external and it was 27.96 megabytes/sec (223.68 megabits/sec) from the external to the computer.

I ran this test on another system, both of these have USB2 by the way. This test was done on an old laptop with a Celeron 2.4ghz processor and these are the results:

73 seconds from the computer to the external
That is 9.58 megabytes/sec (76.54 megabits/sec)

68 seconds fromm the external to the computer
That is 10.28 megabytes/sec (82.24 megabits/sec)

Thanks, that was abit of what I wanted to know. Any of my systems should be doing better than 1 minute on a 650MB file then, other than the OLD Laptop.

Err · Post by **Err** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 10:33 am

canton_kid wrote:Thanks, that was abit of what I wanted to know. Any of my systems should be doing better than 1 minute on a 650MB file then, other than the OLD Laptop.

Try re-installing your motherboard drivers.

TheSovereign · Post by **TheSovereign** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 11:17 am

Err wrote:Try re-installing your motherboard drivers.

hes copying from to/from a flash device. they are slow by nature

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 6:03 pm

What he said ^. I thought you were talking about a USB hard drive. Most flash drives are slower than USB 2.0. Some are faster than others, but generally the less you pay for it the slower it is. None of them will come close to the max speed of USB 2.0.

11 minutes to transfer 700Mb to a flash drive sounds about normal.

ZYFER · Post by **ZYFER** » Mon Mar 17, 2008 7:33 am

As I had already mentioned, it is clearly variable depending on the speed of the device and of computer's hardware. Naturally, with different flash drives you will get varied results as well.

canton_kid · Post by **canton_kid** » Tue Mar 18, 2008 2:34 am

High guys.
I been re-arranging the house and had the computers offline and apart making a better work area.

To clarify, I have an external Sata drive to USB/lan enclosure and also the flash drives. This new Gigabyte system is now reading/writing to the Corsair 4gig Flash drive fast, my other two systems are very slow with the same flash drive and also was slow with that external enclosure. Two systems at once too slow is what made me wonder.
I must have drivers screwed up on the other two systems and maybe their running 1.1 not 2?

I just transfered (to be sure) the same 11 files that total 654MB in that folder from the usb Corsair 4gig flash drive to the IDE internal drive in the Gigabyte system, it took about 90seconds roughly. Less than 2 minutes for sure.

I did just swap drives and video card around in those 2 other systems awhile back, so it's possible the USB drivers aren't right. I had a bad time with ATI video drivers and a 3D program then also.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Tue Mar 18, 2008 6:38 am

You can tell if you have USB 2.0 by going to Device manager, expanding Universal Serial Bus Controllers and look for a device called "Enhanced USB Controller". Might be phrased differently but if it says "Enhanced" then at least some of your ports are 2.0. So cheaper mobos used 2.0 only on the back ports and 1.1 on the front ports.

Also, I've found over the years, that there's a big difference in quality between different USB chipsets. My work bench PC, for instance, has issues with the onboard USB ports (I get write errors when transferring large amounts of data to an external hard drive). I gave up on it and installed a Belkin 5 port PCI USB card along with a 4 port USB hub that mounts in a 3 1/2" drive bay and I use those instead of the onboard ports.

canton_kid · Post by **canton_kid** » Mon Mar 24, 2008 10:45 pm

Thanks FP,

The 2 systems running slow on USB are my Abit and Iwill XP333.
I see I need to install the drivers on the Abit again for USB, I have them here somewhere just not sure what folder on what drive on what system LOL

As for the Iwill XP333, I have the original disk, can't find a USB driver on it?