USB 2.0 Drive Performance - DPChallenge Forums

04/08/2007 03:33:20 PM · #1

I've been disappointed at how slow external USB drives are relative to my internal drives.

I justed tested data transfer:

HD Tune: Maxtor OneTouch II 300 MB Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 11.2 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 13.6 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 13.0 MB/sec
Access Time : 15.1 ms
Burst Rate : 12.8 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 16.3%

My internal drive:
HD Tune: WDC WD2000JB-00EVA0 Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 24.2 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 54.3 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 44.8 MB/sec
Access Time : 14.3 ms
Burst Rate : 65.4 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 4.5%

I used this freeware utility (no installation needed, if you download the ZIP, you can just run the exe), if anyone else wants to try and see if your USB drives work better!

//www.hdtune.com/

Anyone seeing much better results? I do have the drives in a hub, a USB2.0 powered hub.

Message edited by author 2007-04-08 15:52:59.

04/08/2007 03:37:11 PM · #2

Well ill tell you this, dont be quick to mention USB as the blaming factor. The fact that the external controller is slower is normal. Unless you have a very old hard drive running on an ATA100 bus for your internal.

The drive thats inside the case also limits the speed. The USB bus has its limitations but if the drive is slower then the bus then its not gonna perform.

2. Drives hooked straight to the motherboard are typically faster anyways. Espcially true for SATA hard drives. Just like anything else like external cache, you dont see it anymore because they found out it works faster when its hooked directly to the processor.

Anyone testing a different External hard drive is gonna have much different results, the bus wont change much performance wise but the case and the drive in it have alot to say.

Most Large Capacity (over 80 gigs you know them 320 or 500 gb drives)External hard drives that are under 250 dollars are ATA100, these will not outperform Internal SATA hard drives no matter what. SATA Internal or External will typically outperform ATA100/133 drives wether they be usb or internal. You picked two very unequal drives to compare.

That said all hard drives ARE NOT equal.

Message edited by author 2007-04-08 15:42:07.

04/08/2007 03:45:22 PM · #3

Originally posted by RainMotorsports:

My internal drive is ATA100. I don't have serial ATA. It's a Western Digital Caviar special edition drive, 200GB.

Actually, I also have several WD external USB2 drives, and another internal ATA 100 drive (also WD), and the results are basically comparable.

I note that most of the USB drives are advertised with 480Mb/s (that's bits per second) transfer rates. That would be 60MB/s above, and you can see I'm getting nowhere near that.

I am curious to see what speeds others are getting from there external drive.

Message edited by author 2007-04-08 16:11:38.

04/08/2007 03:47:23 PM · #4

"We chose the comprehensive version and selected a 21.6GB subset of our work-a-day hard disk. The initial backup took about 2 hours, including a verification pass, but subsequent incremental backups took only minutes. Backup is best done at off-peak times, because the software took roughly 50 percent of our 1.2-GHz laptop test system's CPU capacity, which was enough to cause it to miss keystrokes and make it unpleasant to use. In non-backup data transfers, we recorded an average transfer speed of 28MBps and a maximum burst speed of 31MBps, which is at the high end of effective USB 2.0 performance."

//www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1749337,00.asp

And as far as the SATA goes i looked up the HDD by the model number i found it as an SATA, i guess there is two version my bad.

Still internal drives typically perform a bit better but it depends. I found that quote on that full review. The program your using to benchmark also may not be acurate.

I no longer use usb externals so i cant help you out.

04/08/2007 03:48:18 PM · #5

Oh and btw u keep saying MB..... its GB, you made that one twice in 300 MB and 200 MB. Now if u want ill send u some of my 512 MB maxtor's from back in the day lol.

Of course we can say Mo and Go for mega octet and gig octet lol

Message edited by author 2007-04-08 15:49:39.

04/08/2007 03:49:15 PM · #6

Thanks for the link. I'll give it a try!

04/08/2007 03:49:29 PM · #7

Originally posted by RainMotorsports:

Oh and btw u keep saying MB..... its GB, you made that one twice in 300 MB and 200 MB. Now if u want ill send u some of my 512 MB maxtor's from back in the day lol.

That's just a software error. But the price was right...

04/08/2007 03:52:09 PM · #8

Originally posted by nshapiro:

I note that most of the USB drives are advertised with 480Mb/s (that's bits per second) transfer rates. That would be 60MB/s above, and you can see I'm getting nowhere near that.

I have never seen an ATA 100 Hard drive get better then 33 MB/s and its reated at 100 max and Serial ATA300 gets about 120 MB/s on a 300 MB/s bus.

480 Mb/s is the maximum thruput of USB. NOT THE HARD DRIVE. Thats what we call Marketing Lies. As you said 60 MB/s would be the actual cap in Megabytes versus the rated "Megabit's (/8)"

I can garuntee you there is no USB drive on the market capable of that actual type of transfer speed, and im willing to bet not even a half of that for most.

It also kind of gets down to where the cable company advertisises when they say MegaBit's instead of Megabyte's which heklps create an advertised number 8 times bigger then what most people are thinking of.

It seems PC Mag is getting about half of the 60 MB/s though. Probly twice what your getting? Even so if the hard drive cant output more then say 33MB/s then your not gonna get 60 MB/s out of it.

Message edited by author 2007-04-08 15:59:09.

04/08/2007 03:57:08 PM · #9

ANyone had experience with LACIE external Hard drives and or know who makes the internal drive for them?

04/08/2007 04:05:50 PM · #10

Originally posted by RainMotorsports:

Originally posted by nshapiro:

My internal drive is ATA100. I don't have serial ATA. It's a Western Digital Caviar special edition drive, 200GB.

That wasnt a software error was it?

No, I bought that drive myself and put it in. I know it's WD Caviar special edition, but the actual drive number above was from the HD-Tune (I just pasted that blob in from the app). I know the WDC WD2000JB part is right from memory, the JB was the special edition part, barebones version.

My system is getting old and long in the tooth, but it's a pretty good system: Dell Precision 650, Dual Xeon.

EDIT: Wow, I just checked the Dell site and my system just passed it's 4th birthday. I didn't even realize it was so old! I usually upgrade every two years, but this one's been a pretty good computer.

Message edited by author 2007-04-08 16:10:42.

04/08/2007 04:07:03 PM · #11

What i meant is when i said you said MB instead of GB, you said it was a software error.

However you typed "My internal drive is ATA100. I don't have serial ATA. It's a Western Digital Caviar special edition drive, 200MB."

If i go any further in it might look like a personal attack lol. Eitherway im getting off topic.

It does seem PC Mag is getting 32 MB/s Peak which sounds about right for an ATA Hard drive which ive never seen peak over 33MB/s. But your still getting short of their results.

Message edited by author 2007-04-08 16:08:01.

04/08/2007 04:15:19 PM · #12

Originally posted by RainMotorsports:

No problem, but that is off topic and falls under nitpicking my typing. Mainly, it's friendly banter but not necessary in this case. I do know what I'm saying, even if I don't type it. :)

Yes, and the fact that they didn't get that rate is back to the original topic. It's a good example of the threads original intent: to solicit other's performance data.

04/08/2007 04:15:25 PM · #13

Here are my results. First two are internal. Third external USB.

HD Tune: WDC WD1200JB-75CRA0 Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 1.7 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 45.1 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 30.3 MB/sec
Access Time : 15.4 ms
Burst Rate : 77.6 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 29.1%

HD Tune: WDC WD1200JB-00DUA1 Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 25.6 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 47.8 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 39.5 MB/sec
Access Time : 14.1 ms
Burst Rate : 69.3 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 20.4%

HD Tune: LaCie BigDisk Benchmark (500 Gb)

Transfer Rate Minimum : 2.9 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 12.1 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 11.7 MB/sec
Access Time : 14.9 ms
Burst Rate : 12.3 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 48.5%

USB disk looks for me reasonably well. Didn't expect too much of it.
(It's mainly used for backup purposes only)

04/08/2007 04:18:07 PM · #14

Your primary's minimum speed is scary!

Nikon AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5G IF-ED

04/08/2007 04:19:26 PM · #15

Originally posted by hajeka:

Here are my results. First two are internal. Third external USB.

USB disk looks for me reasonably well. Didn't expect too much of it.
(It's mainly used for backup purposes only)

Your USB drive is much slower, like mine are. And look at CPU utilization!

Anyone have one with up to specs performance?

hsolakidis

Nikon D50

04/08/2007 04:20:11 PM · #16

Usb drives suck. All of them. End of story. They 're meant for convenience, not speed.

04/08/2007 04:23:04 PM · #17

Originally posted by nshapiro:

Your USB drive is much slower, like mine are. And look at CPU utilization!

The one thing id say, The CPU has to process data from the USB hub in a slightly different manner then the IDE bus. This might explain the extra utilization of CPU power.

04/08/2007 04:24:29 PM · #18

Originally posted by RainMotorsports:

Your primary's minimum speed is scary!

I'll give it another try (not now) on a quiet system

04/08/2007 04:27:57 PM · #19

Originally posted by hsolakidis:

Usb drives suck. All of them. End of story. They 're meant for convenience, not speed.

As for speed: it's a lot nicer for backups than tapes or dvd's.

04/08/2007 04:35:55 PM · #20

Duh--just to make sure I don't give the software a bad wrap, the MB error in the report was mine (I added the size, forgot I did). I guess I type MB too much ;)

After all, my first PC had 256 BYTES of memory.

04/08/2007 04:37:53 PM · #21

Well i cant contribute because i dont have an external currently but, i felt like testing my 500 GB SATA II drive

HD Tune: WDC WD5000KS-00MNB0 Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 35.2 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 70.8 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 55.5 MB/sec
Access Time : 13.3 ms
Burst Rate : 88.9 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 4.9%

04/08/2007 04:38:34 PM · #22

Originally posted by nshapiro:

Yeah well ill sell you my 1983 IBM PC jr 8088 its 1.5hmz and has 512K of ram but you can upgrade it to 640k by using the 128K Gaming SideCar

04/08/2007 04:40:44 PM · #23

Originally posted by RainMotorsports:

Originally posted by nshapiro:
Duh--just to make sure I don't give the software a bad wrap, the MB error in the report was mine (I added the size, forgot I did). I guess I type MB too much ;)

After all, my first PC had 256 BYTES of memory.

Yeah well ill sell you my 1983 IBM PC jr 8088 its 1.5hmz and has 512K of ram but you can upgrade it to 640k by using the 128K Gaming SideCar

Well, try playing games on my computers two digit (hex) display ;)