WD Passport USB 3.0 Slow transfer rate

Are you using the USB ports on the front of the case or the back.

I know it sounds like a bad question, but you are using the blue ones(right above the audio plugs) with the new usb 3 style cable right(drive should come with a super short cable.)? The drive will run on a USB3 port with USB2 cable, but without the USB3 speeds

I am running the device on the on-board USB ports in the back of the case, the blue ones (USB 3.0).
I am also using the USB 3.0 cable provided with the hard drive. It is backwards compatible to USB 2.0, but it is capable of USB 3.0.

Can you please run a drive benchmark to see what the raw speed of the drive/interface is.

Scroll past the PRO version to the free yet older one.

http://www.hdtune.com/download.html

Will do so now and report once completed.

ok.

Well, looks like I can't follow up on this issue because something else is up.

I was having issues with this drive earlier on these USB 3.0 ports, my PC would completely lock up and freeze. I tried uninstalling-reinstalling all kinds of versions of the Etron usb 3.0 drivers, all to no avail. Finally I reformatted the hard drive and it worked fine for about 30 minutes. Transferred 50 gb onto it at ~20MBps (using USB 3.0). Now event viewer shows Event ID 11: The driver detected a controller error on the disk.

This issue is nonexistent on usb 2.0, only on these usb 3.0s. I have no method of checking other usb 3.0 ports as this is my only computer with them.

Any thoughts?

Also, running HD Tune on my 500 GB primary shows many downwards spikes while my 1tb slave shows a much less drastic variance in speed. What does this mean about my primary? Health monitor from HD Tune shows "OK"

Can you please confirm if the HDD policy is set to:

1. Better Performance
2. Enable Write Caching on the device

Right mouse click on HDD > Properties > Hardware > Select the device in the list > Properties > General > Change Settings > Policies > Select Better performance and Select Enable write caching on the device

If not, please do so and you may be required to restart.

Hope this helps.  

Hello Elmo,
Thank you for the reply. Shall I do so while it is plugged in the USB 3.0, or keep it in the USB 2.0? Or does this matter

I set the policy to Better performance/enable write caching like you said. Now It does not show up in windows explorer when plugged into usb 3.0. Disk management says the disk must be initialized before used, and then it told me it could not find it. Device manager detects it.

HD Tune shows the Passport as two drives. Both called exactly the same thing, one is 0 MB and one is 1000 GB. It stays around the 22MBps mark for benchmarking it

This is somewhat of a surprise as I have modified the policies on multiple drives spread across multiple systems.

Are you still able to access the drive? If you are I would recommend no longer making changes unless the data has been backed up.

I apologize for the inconvenience.

As for the changes, they should have been performed on the USB3.0 port/interface.

22megabyte/sec sounds like USB2 speeds(under it to some extent).

I do not tend to use Better performance on externals(but its a personal preference that should not have caused that issue).

What does the drive bench at with USB2.