USB3.0

[swood91]

I've got two 1TB USB3.0 compatible hard drives and a laptop with USB3.0 ports.
Here are the hard drives in question:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004445JK4

And here is my laptop running Win 7:
http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/hp-pavilion-dv6-6001sa-15-6-laptop-white-16-off-429-97-pcworld-amazing-laptop-from-1013432

I reformatted both hard drives in FAT32. One hard drive holds all my tv shows and the other movies. I only seem to get 20MB/s transferring speed. Does anyone know why that is? Why am i not getting USB3.0 speeds?

Thanks a lot in advance
swood

 

[Chainzsaw]

Hi swood91.

Are you sure you formatted with FAT32 - and not NTFS?

Also - those WD My passport drives do not spin as fast as regular HDD's so your 20MB/s is pretty much as fast as your HDD can go.

The only way to get higher transfer speeds would be to get some USB3 flash drive - usually they can do over 100MB/s on a USB3 connection.

Also - I have this HDD as well - and although it's only the USB2 version - it still "only" does about 20MB/sec copying.

 

[Chainzsaw]

Also check this out:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/263426-32-passport-essential-usb3-questions

Basically it says "Please check tomshardware 2.5'' Hard Drive speed Chart.".

It is an actual physical limitation of your HDD which is platter based.

 

[Chainzsaw]

Found it:

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/external-hard-drive-charts/Average-WriteTransfer-Performance,Marque_fbrandx46,695.html

 

[k1114]

I would disagree and you contradict yourself. The thread you posted said he can get to 70MB/s, the charts show wd 2.5" 5400rpm average at least 60 MB/s, that is the true limitation of the hdd. The chart you linked is showing the limit of usb2.

Make sure the usb3 drivers are up to date and that you are actually in a usb3 port.

 

[sminlal]

Make sure you're using a USB 3.0 cable. USB 2.0 cables will fit into USB 3.0 devices, but they'll only transfer data at USB 2.0 speeds.

 

[swood91]

I'm using the cable that came with it and my laptop came with 2 USB 3 ports and 2 USB2. I have tested it in all 4 ports even thought i know for sure which ones are USB3

 

[Chainzsaw]

Alright well I wasn't trying to contradict myself. I think i might have just mis-read...ANYWHOO....

swood91 - please try to reformat your HDD - this time try using NTFS and set the default allocation size of 64KB, or the highest one you can select.

The default allocation size helps by reading more data quickly (being bigger) - and is especially good for large file sizes (such as video files).

And if you can't format with NTFS and you absoutely need FAT32 - just try doing the same thing as above (set the highest default allocation size you can).

Just make sure to back up everything from that HDD first though.

 

[sminlal]

swood91 - please try to reformat your HDD - this time try using NTFS and set the default allocation size of 64KB, or the highest one you can select.

The default allocation size helps by reading more data quickly (being bigger) - and is especially good for large file sizes (such as video files).

Sorry, this is a little bit off topic but I'd like to prevent misleading information from spreading:

There's no difference in speed reading or writing files on volumes with 4K or 64K-byte allocation sizes. It's just as fast to read 1M of data from 256 4K clusters as it is to read is from 16 64K clusters. In both cases the work that's actually done is to read 2048 sectors of 512 byes each from the drive.

Where a larger allocation size helps is in reducing the amount of file system metadata needed to track files. And there can be an indirect speed benefit because if your volume gets badly fragmented then for a file of a given size the drive with the larger clusters will have fewer file segments to seek to. But that's an abnormal condition that should be avoided.

The downside of the larger cluster size is that every file will waste an average of half the cluster size of unused space in the last cluster, which is why large cluster sizes are generally recommended only for volumes that store large files.

 

[swood91]

Both my hard drives need to be formatted in FAT32. I formatted them Easeus Partition Master 8.0.1 and selected the highest cluster size (Can't actually remember what was the highest). Would a different partition program give me higher cluster size.

Bare in mind almost all the videos on my movie hard drive are 700MB avi. And on my tv shows range from 175MB to about 500MB depending on the show.

Thanks
swood

 

[Chainzsaw]

Sorry, this is a little bit off topic but I'd like to prevent misleading information from spreading:

There's no difference in speed reading or writing files on volumes with 4K or 64K-byte allocation sizes. It's just as fast to read 1M of data from 256 4K clusters as it is to read is from 16 64K clusters. In both cases the work that's actually done is to read 2048 sectors of 512 byes each from the drive.

Where a larger allocation size helps is in reducing the amount of file system metadata needed to track files. And there can be an indirect speed benefit because if your volume gets badly fragmented then for a file of a given size the drive with the larger clusters will have fewer file segments to seek to. But that's an abnormal condition that should be avoided.

The downside of the larger cluster size is that every file will waste an average of half the cluster size of unused space in the last cluster, which is why large cluster sizes are generally recommended only for volumes that store large files.

You are contradicting yourself. First you say my information is fud, then you say it indirectly gives a speed benefit.

I did not give misleading information, it is fact that if you have a higher cluster size your transfer rates will go up slightly versus a smaller cluster size, it is not going to magically double your transfer speeds (if that is what you thought i was saying) though. It does create "wasted" space.

Yes a higher cluster size does waste disk space especially if you write lots of small files. But for larger files - it wouldn't really matter.

.....

Alright...did some more digging for you there swood. Not sure if this information will be helpful but here you go:

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?wdc_lang=en&fid=wdsfMyPassport_Essential_SE

Try downloading a new firmware version to your HDD (im not sure if you already have it).

http://support.wdc.com/download/notes/Win_Univ_FW_Updater_31011_ReleaseNotes.pdf

Just make sure to back up the data first and read the instructions carefully.

I was thinking this firmware update could possibly fix your issue - as it mentions it "fixes some incompatibility issues with some HP USB products" since I noticed you have an HP notebook. I don't know what that means exactly - but maybe it's related to your issue (not getting your full speed)?

 

[sminlal]

it is fact that if you have a higher cluster size your transfer rates will go up slightly

Not if your disk isn't fragmented - performance will be identical on an contiguous file.

I just don't want people to go around thinking they can speed their disk up by using larger cluster sizes. You CAN improve performance by tuning the stripe size of a RAID set based on the average I/O size your applications are using. But that is NOT true for the NTFS or FAT cluster size.

 

[star111]

I'm currently planning to buy a new hard drive. I've seen that storage capacities up to 6TB are quit normal nowadays. Do you know whether they work with USB 3.0 because of the transmission speed? Have you ever seen such a hard drive with 6TB? Is this a combination of several hard drives or really just one?

Now my last question: Could you fill such a 6TB capacity?

 

[k1114]

I'm currently planning to buy a new hard drive. I've seen that storage capacities up to 6TB are quit normal nowadays. Do you know whether they work with USB 3.0 because of the transmission speed? Have you ever seen such a hard drive with 6TB? Is this a combination of several hard drives or really just one?

Now my last question: Could you fill such a 6TB capacity?

Your questions are completely off topic so please don't hijack someone elses thread. Make a new thread. The largest hdd is currently 3tb, the link you posted shows hdd arrays, look at the pictures.

 

[swood91]

Thank you everyone for your replies.

I'm just going to wait for a descent portable 3TB HDD to come out and then worry about the speed of that if there are any problems.

Thanks again
swood