Very Slow external harddrive usb2.0

I have a western digital 80 gig external harddrive hooked to my hp dv8000 with usb and it seems very very slow. i've just reformated it and it's still slow.

here's a hdtune screenshot.

 

That does seem rather slow, even for a USB HD. Try running WD's diagnostic tool and see if it detects any errors. http://support.wdc.com/download/?cxml=n&pid=4&swid=3

You might also want to try updating the firmware of the enclosure.

 

I'd try another port or another cable as well. That is really slow.

 

If you have several USB devices plugged into your computer (even USB stuff integrated into the PC like a webcam), it will slow down as the main USB controller only has so much available bandwidth.

Its possible that the main controller shares a single 480Mbps link with all the USB ports (my old nc8430 did at least) regardless of it they are used or not, and that slowed down a lot of stuff. I was definitely getting that speed with my drives, and there was nothing I could do.

 

I don't think it is unusually slow as I have a WD 80GB 7200 w/8MB cache runs about the same. But Greg did identify, it is likely the USB not HDD. I say that because it is a relatively flat line. HDD is not having issues getting data to the connection. If the curve was starting high and going lower I would suspect HDD issue might be involved. Anyway I have no idea what I am talking about but mine is the same has been for many years. What kind of numbers are you people looking for?

 

Looks like USB 1.0 speeds to me

 

USB 1.0 is slower than 10MB/sec, it's more like 1MB/sec actual throughput.

 

I'm thinking more inline with at least what my 5400rpm 2.5" drive would get, 30-40MB/sec roughly. Average of around the middle of that maybe (USB being the bottleneck).

 

Yea it is what I get so if someone can improve I am looking. I have seen some stuff claim to be almost 30MB USB 2.0 but I don't believe everything I read. ESATA is the way to go if you want anything close to internal speeds. I have discussed in the past and your speeds are within the range of normal for external USB 2.0.

 

I average 25MB/sec transfer with my cheap Apricorn 80GB USB external, so your 11MB/sec looks kinda low. Either the drive is hurrendously slow, or the lappy's chipset/drivers/overhead are the cause. I'd test it on another comp if possible to see if you can reproduce the same results.


http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=3210436&postcount=136

 

What would you like to see? I have 2 external drives I can try (5400.3 Seagates, 1 IDE and 1 SATA in USB enclosures) with HDTune if that is satisfactory?

 

Thanks for the responses. A few things: The external is a WD oem, not a aftermarket case. Also, I only had the drive plugged into usb, no other usb devices. pretty sure it's usb 2.0. also, the laptop is running super clean and fast. well, i'm going to try the drive on some other laptops etc, and will report back.

 

ok, it's the laptop because when I use the wd harddrive on a new hp laptop with vista, it gets about 25mb/s. also, i have another external drive that's got usb and firewire. the usb gets about 15mb/s (slow), the firewire gets about 35mb/s. so, again, it seems like it's the usb2 on my laptop that's messed up. Any ideas?