Slow External HDD

Mchart

Mchart

Supreme [H]ardness
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Aug 7, 2004
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I recently acquired a 2TB 'Seagate Expansion' drive with a (claimed) USB 3.0 interface.

Using the USB 3.0 ports on my P8Z68 Pro I only achieve 40-45MBps read and write rates. This drive should be faster. I have no idea what is wrong. I have the Asus USB 3.0 'Turbo' drivers installed. Under both normal and 'turbo' mode the speeds are exactly the same.

I have no clue at all as to what type of drive is actually inside the thing. It should be a hell of a lot faster then 40MBps on a USB 3.0 interface though.

Any help is appreciated.
 
Well, if the rotational speed of the cylinders are low (maybe 5900RPM?) then I think it would negate the throughput rate of USB 3.0. What are the specs of your drive? That could be it.
 
nOrVow said:
Well, if the rotational speed of the cylinders are low (maybe 5900RPM?) then I think it would negate the throughput rate of USB 3.0. What are the specs of your drive? That could be it.
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I've used google quite a bit to figure out what type of drive they stuck in this thing, but I've found nothing. All I know is that it is a 2TB Seagate drive.

Keep in mind that my read rates max out at basically 40MBps as well. Something is not right.

I've re-installed the ASMedia 3.0 Controller drivers, and I removed the Asus USB 3.0 turbo drivers to see if that was causing any issues as well.

Mind you, i'm transferring 300GB to this drive right now and the transfer rate according to windows has now dropped to an average of 35MBps.

It would seem like the device is operating at USB 2.0 speeds even though everything else indicates it is setup to run at the 3.0 protocol.
 
Are you transferring large files ( > 1GB each file)? Remember lots of small files will not be fast on any mechanical disk.
 
Quite frankly that sounds about right from what I have seen of external USB 3.0 hard drives. Particularly if it is a "green" class drive in the enclosure. It will also be affected by how much is currently on the drive...
 
OldSchool said:
Quite frankly that sounds about right from what I have seen of external USB 3.0 hard drives. Particularly if it is a "green" class drive in the enclosure. It will also be affected by how much is currently on the drive...
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Brand new drive with no other data on it.
 
drescherjm said:
Have you benchmarked the drive using CDM (CrystalDiskMark) or Hdtune?
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Basically 40MBps when benchmarked. Essentially the same as windows reports during transfers.

I just find it hard to beleive that such a drive would be so slow. Had I known how slow it was going to be I wouldn't have bought it.
 
To me this looks like you are running in USB2 speed. A drive this large will read and write at over 120MB/s in the outer tracks and over 75 MB/s on the innermost tracks. Even 5XXX RPM drives.
 
I just did a google search and found out I have the exact same external drive! But it's a USB 2.0 drive w/ the same 5900RPM rotational speed. Just did a 1GB file transfer and I get around 38-42 Mbps average. It should be just right considering our drives are "green" class.

Someone correct me if i'm wrong though.
 
5900rpm drives do well over 100MBps. Even my 5400rpm 2,5" USB3 drive does that !
 
I've updated the BIOS, updated USB 3.0 controller drivers; Done pretty much everything I can think of.

The drive is just slow as shit. The only thing I haven't tried is swapping cables, as I know some cables just don't work well.

Motherboard is P8Z68-V Pro by the way.
 
Aesma said:
5900rpm drives do well over 100MBps. Even my 5400rpm 2,5" USB3 drive does that !
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Seriously? :confused: How are you getting those speeds? Wtf I got jipped then.. thank goodness the drive was on a Black Friday sale. :D
 
Insert :everythingwentbetterthenexpected:

It was the cable. The shell on the thing is rough fitting into ports and basically the thing was dangling on there with hardly any contact. After jamming in the cable harder into the port on my motherboard I get 120-130MBps writes.
 
Spend $30 on a ESATA / USB 3.0 enclosure and move in to the modern era.
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That would be no good without one of those high speed interfaces.. The Gigabyte P45-UD3L will not have USB3 although I am not sure about ESATA. I guess with a cheap $7 cable anyone can have that though..

Edit: Or get an enclosure with an interface card.
 
My setup is old and crummy. :( So I don't think I'd benefit from doing that... blurgh
 
Often with Gigabyte and MSI boards you get an eSATA bracket for converting internal SATA to eSATA.

But I wouldn't open an external drive until 1 year after buying it, when it's out of warranty.

As an aside my USB3 is on an X58 board, so the very first generation of USB3, using a third party chip, and performance is still good.
 
Aesma said:
Often with Gigabyte and MSI boards you get an eSATA bracket for converting internal SATA to eSATA.

But I wouldn't open an external drive until 1 year after buying it, when it's out of warranty.

As an aside my USB3 is on an X58 board, so the very first generation of USB3, using a third party chip, and performance is still good.
Click to expand...

Oh my goodness... I'm an idiot. I totally forgot about that bracket. Thanks for the reminder! I have it stuffed in a box somewhere with a bunch of other cables. Hopefully I can acquire some gains after switching the enclosure.
 
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