Firewire speed vs firewire speed??

Ok, this MAY be a bad comparison so tell me if so.

but I have a Dell desktop replacement laptop (9100) with a small firewire port. I back up things through it to a Seagate 300G firewire external drive.
For a 10 Gig folder (of photos or videos), it takes around an hour to transfer this.

At work I work on many apple computers using firewire drives and when I transfer similar size folders it takes a fraction of the time (not using firewire 800, just 400).

Why is my laptop firewire connection so SLOW??

Thanks for the info in advance!

dave

 

Windows will partially contribute to that due to the way it copies folders / files (hence the preparing to copy) but it should not take an hour -

You can try a different firewire cable, possible bad firewire driver for the dell?

 

Going at a smooth 20MB/s (high average for 400mbps) it should take about 9.3 minutes. It sounds like your laptop either has a REALLY slow/failing hard drive internally, or you have a big driver issue.

 

If you run WinXP with SP2, have a look at this link. Let me know if it helps

 

Well I looked at the link and installed the fix software. Then I did a test. copied a folder with 3.47G worth of files to a brand new Seagate external 400G Firewire/USB2 drive. (I dont have USB 2 BTW)
The copy took 31 minutes.

So I guess Ill look into the drivers. This is not something I have done much though so Im not sure where to begin. I guess Ill go to the Dell site.

Well see what happens. Thanks to all that have offered help so far.

How could I text my hard drive speed? Would the fact that the 60 G internal drive has only got 5 G left have anything to do with transfer speed like this? I know its not great for other reasons to have a drive this full.
dave

 

Was on chat help with Dell for a LONG time. They took control of my system and checked out drivers and said they are fine, then they did it themselves on my laptop and saw the problem. But they said my system is fine and Id have to call their pay service that deals with non-dell software and hardware.

Basically I feel Im stuck with this very slow speed. I dont get it but feel it should be way faster. Its so basic. Ive got a Dell laptop (Ins 9100). Its got a small firewire port, Ive got 4 seagate ext 300G and 400G drives. and they all work the same. half hour to transfer 3.5G.

Dell says drivers are fine, Drives are new and ALL work the same so its not likely the drives. Dont knwo what else to do.

Very frustrated.

 

Use a program like HDtune to check the drive over. Test both the USB and then firewire transfer speeds. Also might help if you have other external drives to test this out on.