USB 2.0 enclosure w/IDE drive, really slow

  • Thread starter Thread starter Robert Barr
  • Start date Start date
R

Robert Barr

Possibly dumb question, but I thought the USB 2.0 was supposed to be
fairly quick. I'm using a Plumax enclosure with an IBM 75GXP, with an
accessory USB 2.0 PCI card.

Everything works fine; it's just very slow. Copying a 2 GB file takes
over half an hour, which can't be right. Can it?

I'm using Windows 2000, so there's no chance I loaded the wrong driver;
it doesn't use any (supplied) drivers. Just plug it in and away it goes.

Searching for any comments on enclosures just leads me to sales sites --
no real information on what to expect realistically on data transfer
speeds.

Comments? Is 17 minutes per GB about right? I wouldn't think so, but...

TIA.

RB
 
Robert said:
Possibly dumb question, but I thought the USB 2.0 was supposed to be
fairly quick. I'm using a Plumax enclosure with an IBM 75GXP, with an
accessory USB 2.0 PCI card.

Everything works fine; it's just very slow. Copying a 2 GB file takes
over half an hour, which can't be right. Can it?

I'm using Windows 2000, so there's no chance I loaded the wrong driver;
it doesn't use any (supplied) drivers. Just plug it in and away it goes.

Searching for any comments on enclosures just leads me to sales sites --
no real information on what to expect realistically on data transfer
speeds.

Comments? Is 17 minutes per GB about right? I wouldn't think so, but...
Click to expand...


That sounds like USB1 speed. (around 1MB/sec)
With USB 2.0, you should see somewhere in the neighborhood of 15-25MB/sec.


-WD
 
That sounds like USB1 speed. (around 1MB/sec)
With USB 2.0, you should see somewhere in the neighborhood of 15-25MB/sec.


-WD
Click to expand...

which means you might not have usb 2.0 drivers installed, or it might be
turned off in your bios setup
 
which means you might not have usb 2.0 drivers installed, or it might be
turned off in your bios setup
Click to expand...

I think w2k does not have USB2.0 support unless you have specific
drivers. Even XP needs the first service pack, as far as I remember.

Arno
 
Do you see something like "USB 2.0 Root Hub" in the USB section of
Device Manager? If not, then it's probably running USB 1.x
 
Possibly dumb question, but I thought the USB 2.0 was supposed to be
fairly quick. I'm using a Plumax enclosure with an IBM 75GXP, with an
accessory USB 2.0 PCI card.

Everything works fine; it's just very slow. Copying a 2 GB file takes
over half an hour, which can't be right. Can it?
Click to expand...


Hi,
as the others have said, you are using USB 1.1 drivers and not USB2.0. I'm
not sure if you can get USB2.0 working in Windows2000, or at least it wasn't
possible last time I looked. WindowsXP SP/1 takes care of that. . . .
 
Markeau said:
Do you see something like "USB 2.0 Root Hub" in the USB section of
Device Manager? If not, then it's probably running USB 1.x
Click to expand...

Yes, I have that entry, as well as another that says "PCI to USB
Enhanced host controller", which is supposed to mean USB 2.0. (Several
other USB entries, also, that lack the 'enhanced'). Based on the
transfer rates I'm getting, though, I'm at 1.x.

I checked all USB related items in the BIOS settings, and when I disable
the onboard USB, I still have the 2.0 entries. Makes sense -- the
auxiliary card should operate pretty much independently.

It's not exactly a crisis, but it would be nice if I could get this
arrangement to operate at 2.0. I've found a USB - oriented website, and
I'll see if they can give me a hand.

Thanks.

RB
 
Arno Wagner said:
I think w2k does not have USB2.0 support unless you have specific
drivers. Even XP needs the first service pack, as far as I remember.
Click to expand...

But the drivers come with the Motherboard's driver CD...
 
Problem solved!

Absolutely none of this makes any sense, but the auxiliary card has 5
USB ports; one of them -- my luck, the one I chose to use -- just will
not support USB 2.0. The other 4 do, and changing the cable from one
port to another increased the performance by a factor of about 15.

I can transfer a 2 GB file (roughly 2; 2,147,467,264 bytes) in 126
seconds. (Versus > 33 minutes). That works out to about 16.985 MB per
second. That's actually a little faster than I can transfer the exact
same file between two 7200 r.p.m. IDE drives in the same system.

Someday I'd like to know why this works out this way, but for now, at
least it works. For the next person who finds this topic in a Google
search, try using different ports on the same aux. card. The internal
one, in my case, is USB 1.x, no matter what.

Thanks for all the tips & suggestions.

RB
 
Select View - Devices by Connection. That will show you which USB hub and
controller the device is on.
 
Robert Barr said:
Problem solved!

Absolutely none of this makes any sense, but the auxiliary card has 5
USB ports; one of them -- my luck, the one I chose to use -- just will
not support USB 2.0. The other 4 do, and changing the cable from one
port to another increased the performance by a factor of about 15.
Click to expand...

There could either have been a problem with the port and the driver
diagnostic features realized 2.0 speeds would have errors, or one port was
restricted by design to 1.0.
 
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