Slow transfer on USB 3.0

Voridian

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Jan 5, 2016
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Hi all, i have read many forum posts on this but none seem to have an answer for me.
Im backing up 400Gb of files from a Seagate Barracuda 2TB HDD to a Western Digital 1TB Passport External HDD via USB 3.0 (both from the back and front usb ports) and am getting a transfer rate of 10-15 MB/s.

I could be wrong but this seems way slower than it should be, can anybody help speed it up?
 
Solution
Hi again, Thanks for the answers. I have found a semi-fix for this. For anybody with the same issue, change the storage devices policies to "Better performance" in the Device Manager. Im now getting 35-40 MB/s

ThomasKK

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May 1, 2016
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Hello,

The thing is, that your PC's USB 3.0 can access data at huge speeds (up to ~500MBps), but the files you're backing up are in the HDD drive, which does not have such fast data accessing speeds. If you used an SSD disk instead, then you would see huge improvement in the file transfer speed.

Not only USB version matters, but also the HDD's read speed you're reading from and the receiving HDD's write speed. (which combines into these 10-15MB/s you see there)

In short: all pieces of technology (sending and receiving) must be a bit more advanced to support USB 3.0 speeds if you want to see these insane speeds when transferring files.
 

Voridian

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Jan 5, 2016
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Oh, Thats a shame. I was hoping that it would be at least able to match the speeds of USB 2.0. Guess il just have to wait a day or two. I do have an SSD but its only 120GB and internal.
 

Promomilia

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Feb 6, 2017
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If you have multiple USB ports on your computer, connect the devices to them instead of connecting all the peripherals to a single multi-port hub. Get a high speed USB cable of at least 480 megabits per second (60 megabytes per second). The shorter the data cord the better. Use a cable that is less than 7 feet long.

Method 1:

Step 1: Hardware and Devices troubleshooter.
Try to run the Hardware and Devices troubleshooter, the steps are mentioned below:

1. Type ‘Troubleshooting’ in the search bar and press Enter.
2. Click on ‘View all’ on the left panel of the ‘Troubleshooting’ window.
3. Click on ‘Hardware and Devices' and follow on the screen instruction.

Step 2: Review Windows Update. The Windows Update service is a key item to review. Windows Update may have updated drivers available that may be relevant to your current issue. Many times, updated drivers are listed in the "Optional" section of Windows Update. Install any pending updates on the pc to check if that helps.

If the issue still persists, follow the Method 2.

Method 2:

Uninstall and reinstall the Universal Serial Bus controllers driver and check, if it works. Refer to the following steps to uninstall the Universal Serial Bus controllers driver from the Device Manager.

a. Click on Windows key + X and then, select Device Manager.
b. Locate and expand “Universal Serial Bus controllers” in the Device Manager Window.
c. Right-click on the “Universal Serial Bus controllers” and click on “uninstall".
d. Restart the computer and check, if it works.

If the issue still persists, follow the Method 3.

Method 3:

Install the latest Chipset Driver from the manufacturer’s website.
Go to the manufacturer’s website, download, uninstall and reinstall the latest chipset drivers in the Device Manager.

Note:
Avoid connecting too many devices to a USB hub. Many users don't know that a USB hub divides the total bandwidth among the devices connected to it. If you have multiple USB ports on your computer, connect the devices to them instead of connecting all the peripherals to a single multi-port hub.

Get a high speed USB cable of at least 480 megabits per second (60 megabytes per second). The shorter the data cord the better. Use a cable that is less than 7 feet long. Longer cords will interfere with the data transfer speed due to the longer distance.

If the issue still persists, follow the Method 4.

Method 4: Clean Boot.

A clean boot helps to eliminate software conflicts and to determine what is causing the problem.
Please refer to the below link to perform Clean Boot.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/929135?ppud=4&wa=wsignin1.0
Note: Please go through the section: How to reset the computer to start as usual after troubleshooting with clean boot of the Kb article to boot the computer in normal startup after fixing the issue.
 

LordLuciendar

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Mar 23, 2011
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The solution is to connect a USB 2.0 480Mbps cable to USB 3.0 drives, I think not. Cable length is pretty much irrelevant, either it works or it doesn't. I'll agree that the way USB works, devices should be connected natively to the computer's ports and certainly not on the same hub (causing both upstream and downstream communication to trip over eachother in the hub's logic and over the same connection.

The issue is likely that your 400GB of files is quite a large number of small files, which causes disk performance to drop drastically (random access). I expect you'd get exactly the same transfer rate if you were on USB 2.0 (or using a USB 2.0 cable), because it's the disk's physical moving parts that slow down random access. Not much you can do.

If you really want to try something, anything, to speed things up, you could try putting those 400GB of files into some type of singular container (ZIP, RAR, VHD, etc.) so that the transfer is one big file instead of many small files. The issue with this is that you essentially have to move the files twice, once into the container and once to the external, so it's pretty unlikely to save you time in the long run.
 

Voridian

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Jan 5, 2016
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Hi again, Thanks for the answers. I have found a semi-fix for this. For anybody with the same issue, change the storage devices policies to "Better performance" in the Device Manager. Im now getting 35-40 MB/s
 
Solution