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    USB 3.0 slow transfer speed

    Discussion in 'Sager and Clevo' started by dwarfwarri, May 18, 2011.

  1. dwarfwarri

    dwarfwarri Notebook Guru

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    Hi guys,

    I have a USB 3.0 500gb ext hard drive but when transferring a 20gb item from it to my sager np8130, the speed is only at 60-70mb/s, and it reaches 40ish mb/s using usb 2.0. I thought USB 3.0 is supposed to be A LOT faster? Anything i'm doing wrong? I have the latest usb 3.0 driver from the clevo driver thread installed.
     
    dwarfwarri, May 18, 2011
    #1
  2. Anthony@MALIBAL

    Anthony@MALIBAL Company Representative

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    Believe it or not, it's probably not USB 3.0 that's limiting you. Most mechanical hard drives have speeds ranging between 70-130MBps. Without knowing your exact brand of external, odds are it's also a slower 2.5" 5400rpm drive and with 2 250GB platters (two disks inside the hard drive) which means it's already slow and with less than ideal areal density.

    This basically means that your max throughput from that particular harddrive is probably only around 80MBps which is why your speeds are pegging out.

    Charts, benchmarks 2.5" Hard Drive Charts (2008), Maximum Read Transfer Rate
     
    Anthony@MALIBAL, May 18, 2011
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  3. dwarfwarri

    dwarfwarri Notebook Guru

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    my external hard drive is the seagate goflex 500gb hard drive. My primary hard drive on my sager is the seagate momentus xt hybrid drive 500gb
     
    dwarfwarri, May 18, 2011
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  4. BenWah

    BenWah Notebook Consultant

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    There's nothing more to say than what Malibal said, it doesn't matter if you had USB 7 interface from the future, the disk drive speed is the limiting factor (bottleneck) you're hitting
     
    BenWah, May 19, 2011
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  5. Anthony@MALIBAL

    Anthony@MALIBAL Company Representative

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    Just from quick googling around, the Amazon product page for that particular drive has a review at the top that explains my previous post. The speeds you are seeing are indeed the maximum speeds that that drive can sustain. It's the drive limiting you, not USB 3.0. A faster drive would be more likely to saturate the connection (like a 7200rpm drive or external SSD).

    Amazon.com: Mark Colan "duke-of-url"'s review of Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 1 TB USB 2.0 Ultr...

    Mechanical hard drives are limited in speed by the fact that they actually have moving parts and can only read at a set rate (they also suffer greatly compared to SSD's in seek time, but that's another story).

    Basically though, even a quick external hard disk drive is going to have trouble getting full USB 3.0 speeds.
     
    Anthony@MALIBAL, May 19, 2011
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  6. Electric Shock

    Electric Shock Notebook Evangelist

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    USB 3.0 is faster than what mechanical drives can provide.

    Don't expect fast performance unless you are using a USB 3.0 flash memory stick or an SSD.
     
    Electric Shock, May 19, 2011
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  7. dwarfwarri

    dwarfwarri Notebook Guru

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    damn....and I had ordered the usb 3.0 adapter just cuz i thought the speed would be a lot faster...
     
    dwarfwarri, May 19, 2011
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  8. Mr_Mysterious

    Mr_Mysterious Like...duuuuuude

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    Lol, don't worry...in a few years, SSD will become mainstream and we'll all be blazing fast.

    Reminds me of the Dane Cook joke about the future: "Five seconds in the DMV line??? I gotta get to work in 3 seconds!"

    Mr. Mysterious
     
    Mr_Mysterious, May 19, 2011
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  9. VisionxOrb

    VisionxOrb Notebook Enthusiast

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    70MBps is 75% faster than 40....sounds alot faster to me.
    get faster drives and your speed will go up where as 40 would be all you ever got out of usb2 no matter how fast your drives were.
     
    VisionxOrb, May 19, 2011
    #9