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WD MyBook 3T USB3 Drive slow

Last response: in Storage
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I recently bought a WD 3T, USB3 MyBook (External drive). It was to be used between my 2 Windows 7/64 machines.
(Newer machine not yet online).

The older current machine (AMD965 Quad) did not have USB3 on the MB so I bought a PCI-E USB3 card.

Installed all and updated drivers on both.


I went to copy a large folder (just copy and paste) from my SATA3 HD to the MyBook and expend it to copy the folder at a fast rate.

I was very disappointed.
First the windows copy popup said it would take 1 hr then it went to 7 hrs. OK the Microsoft clock is screwed up, but the speed was only 19.2 MB/Sec. NOT WHAT I expected from a USB3 drive (s/b max a 5Gb). It did jump up to about 25MB/Secs occassionally.

Well since I started this about 8PM is was not going to wait for it.

Next AM I see a copy duplicate message. 'The destination already contains a folder named 'cgi'
I understand the message but how could I get this message when just copying the 1 folder (yes it has many sub-folders) but Windows does not allow dups so the source folder could not have dups in it. I replied yes and it occurred on 2 more folders and then 27 files were dupped. Just not sure wht this means.

The copy ended shortly after I replied yes.


The I ran a DiskBench to copy a 1G file from our C drive to the MyBook. 53.242MB/s. Twice as fast as the copy folder but still not nearly the speed I was expecting from USB3. Same DeskBench test to another internal HD gave 95.111MB/s.

I am just sure if it a drive problem, a USB3 Card problem or me??????

Can anyone help???????



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You can use single question marks :) 

Windows is quite slow at copying large numbers of tiny files. That's because it has to create a directory entry for every new file, and that can involve seeking. This is exacerbated when the drive to which you are writing is connected via USB, because that means write caching is disabled, so it forces the directory entries to be written through.

Try creating an archive with the many tiny files - that avoids the creation of directory entries, and lets the copying operates more quickly.

Bear in mind that the 4.8Gb/s spec for USB3 is NOT 4.8 gigabytes / second. It's 4.8 gigabits / second. That's a maximum of 600 megabytes / second, and you won't achieve that because of overheads. You won't get anything like that from a hard drive, anyway.

The duplicate issue is a different matter - can't help you there.

Thanks

I understand B vs b (bytes = 8 bits).

What you say makes the drives basically worthless for a on demand backup.

But the DiskBench of a single 1 GB file stil shown just 53MBytes is about 500Mbit which is USB2 speed not the USB3 4.8Gbit speed.

Is there a good test program that I can use that just writes to disk and does not have to read / copy?

Anything else that I can check?

I write a quick VB6 program that writes out a record of 1000 spaces until it gets to 1,000,000,000. Then divided by the time (after open and before close).
Comes out to 30MB/s

Same test on our Sata3 comes out about 31MB/s

Same test on a RamDrive is 35 MB/s

Switched to ASUS hi speed and RamDrive is 44.4 MB/s

MyBook is now 43.5 MB/s
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Storage Authority

QuickBooksDev said:
I am using the cable that came with the drive. Since it is a USB3 drive I assume it is a USB3 cable. It is a WD 3T, USB3 MyBook (External drive).


This is from page 2 of the Product Spec:

1. A USB 3.0 host and USB 3.0 certified cable are
required to obtain SuperSpeed USB performance. said:
1. A USB 3.0 host and USB 3.0 certified cable are
required to obtain SuperSpeed USB performance.


Here's the link: http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/AAG/ENG/4178-7051...

Buy a USB 3.0 cable and you should be good to go.
Storage Expert

QuickBooksDev said:
I write a quick VB6 program that writes out a record of 1000 spaces until it gets to 1,000,000,000. Then divided by the time (after open and before close).
Comes out to 30MB/s

Same test on our Sata3 comes out about 31MB/s

Same test on a RamDrive is 35 MB/s

Switched to ASUS hi speed and RamDrive is 44.4 MB/s

MyBook is now 43.5 MB/s

A RAM drive only gave throughput of 35 MB/sec? These statistics suggest to me that the problem is not in your USB 3.0 at all. If the speed is comparable to the max speed of an internal drive, and the max speed of a RAM drive (which ought to be pretty fast), then something else is slowing you down. What it could be, I have no idea. But you can't expect a spinning-platter drive with USB 3.0 to be faster than a virtual drive in RAM, can you?

WyomingKnott said:
A RAM drive only gave throughput of 35 MB/sec? These statistics suggest to me that the problem is not in your USB 3.0 at all. If the speed is comparable to the max speed of an internal drive, and the max speed of a RAM drive (which ought to be pretty fast), then something else is slowing you down. What it could be, I have no idea. But you can't expect a spinning-platter drive with USB 3.0 to be faster than a virtual drive in RAM, can you?


Yes, I didn't understand the test in VB6 but 35MB/sec for a Ramdrive it's so slow.

I have the Softperfect RamDisk and I made a speed test with hd_speed the result 5800MB/sec !! with peaks of 6000MB/sec my ram is 1300 probably a ram 1600 give more speed for sure.

About My Book 3T I saw the same at the begining the speed was nothing that I spect. I get peaks of 78MB/sec but normally is around 55MB/sec, at the beginnig was only 20MB/sec

Maybe something that I did increase the speed, disable indexing server, disable antivirus, high performance in the power setting of my laptop, and you can check the fast performance options in th policies of the hardisk (I never use for external hdd)

btw maybe your disk have a problem in the MFT, you can fix that with chkdsk /f e: (or wherever another unit f: g: etc)

-ITGabs
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