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External Storage USB 2 vs USB 1.1

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  • External Storage
  • USB
  • Storage
  • Product
Last response: in Storage
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April 16, 2007 1:58:06 PM

Im putting together an old 80GB and sticking it in a $20 enclosure(sp) case. I want a "jumk" drive to store all my torrents and other various large files.

The HD has the following stats:
Average Seek Time: 8.9 ms
Average latency: 4.2 ms
Rotational Speed: 7,200 rpm
Transfer Rate: 100 MB/s
Buffer Size: 2 MB

I have an old 20gb in there now, just to see if it works right (80gb should be here in a few days).

My concern is that I have an old motherboard that only uses USB 1.1 and from with the 20gb hard drive it takes about 30 mins to transfer 1GB of data. I found a speed test program and these are the results.



Everything I have can use USB 2.0, so would it greatly increase the speed to get a USB 2.0 PCI card and hook the HD up to that? Is it the HD that is the big limitation, the USB 1.1 or is UBS just not a fast transfer?

Does anyone have a link to benchmarks to for a USB 2.0 external HD?

More about : external storage usb usb

April 16, 2007 2:41:32 PM

It will *massively* increase your speed to get a USB2 PCI card.
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April 17, 2007 8:50:21 AM

Firewire is generally a better standard than USB 2.

If your hard drive enclosure has a firewire interface, use that!

Otherwise, USB 2 is your best bet!
April 19, 2007 4:54:12 AM

Well I got myself a USB 2.0 6 port PCI card (4 external/2 internal)

Here are the new results:



As you can see, there is a visible speed increase. I think the current limitation is just the HD its self, as it may be an 5400 RPM or slower drive (its over 10 years old).

When I finaly get the 80 gig, ill see what increase in performance I get.


Thanks for the help and info.
April 19, 2007 9:02:19 AM

10Mb is not a large file!

That's a rubbish speed test.

Have you got a 1Gb file? Try copying that over the slow interface and then the fast one - that'll show you the real speed improvement!
April 19, 2007 1:58:39 PM

I transfered a 1.2GB movie over before..

With USB 1.1: 30 mins
With USB 2.0: 2 mins.
!