Slow USB 2.0 speeds with external enclosure

[smitbret]

Can anyone give me an explanation as to why I can not rip or burn faster than 5.7x with any DVD-RW in any external enclosure? I have tried two different enclosures with 3 different DVD burners, connected to the integrated USB ports on the motherboard, or connected to a PCI USB 2.0 card. One of the enclosures also has a firewire connection and it has no trouble burning at 8x when it's hooked up that way, so this has got to be something internal. Running Win XP SP2 with all the current updates. Any ideas?
-Brett

 

[nobly]

So 1x read speed is about 1.3MB/s, so 5.7x is 7.41MB/s, well under the USB 2.0 spec.

Sounds like you might have a PCI or USB bottleneck. What other components do you have in your system? Just give us the whole system part list.

Also what are you burning? Lots of data files? There have been some discussions on firewire vs usb in those cases.

 

[smitbret]

I don't have a soundcard, I am using the onboard stuff. The only PCI card I have is a separate USB/Firewire adapter card cuz my board suffers from the infamous USB 2.0 instability issues that a bunch of AN8-SLI users suffer from. Unless my SATA drives are on the PCI bus, and I wouldn't think they are........ I kept thinking PCI bottleneck, but I can't figure out where it would be coming from. I have quite a few USB connections, (printer,scanner,camera,mp3 player,front panel, etc.), but they're necer in use at the same time. Guess I'll unhook them all and see if I get any better results.
-Brett

 

[nobly]

Onboard chips are connected to something. Usually I think the onboard sound is hooked into the PCI bus. Its just hardwired in since its onboard.

But that still shouldn't be hitting your USB performance that badly.

Have you tried the enclosure w/ USB on another computer? It might be an enclosure issue with USB. Alot of times companies say USB 2.0! But they don't put in the maximum transfer rate. The annoying thing is that as long as its over 1.1Mbps, everyone starts shouting USB 2.0, even though its still as slow as molasses.

 

[technology-sponge]

keepign in mind it could be a pc bottleneck, but USB2.0 tops out for hdd's at a max of approx 30MB's burst in real life. for opticaly drives, i guess this would be much lower. so anything up to 20MB's burst would be okay, and maybe 12-15 continuous.

5.7x does seem a little slow though