External hard drive read/write speeds.

[Graham]

Hi all,

I have a few movies on an older 320 GB 3,5 inch mains powered (psu) external hard drive.
I have also just bought a 2 inch 1TB external hard.

So now I decided to take all the movies off the 320 GB drive, and copy them to my new 1 TB drive.
Why is it so slow?
I am copying 295 GB of movies, (just a few, like I said ) and it is taking forever.
I am getting a transfer speed of 1,2 MB/sec.
Is this about right?
Just seems painfully slow to shift 295 GB from one external to another external.

Gra.

 

[AndyCook]

are you using
USB?
USB1 or 2?

eSATA?

connection methods?

 

[Graham]

USB.

I don't know if USB 1 or USB 2.

How can I tell?

Gra.

 

[Graham]

Hi Again,

Looks like the USB ports on the computer are USB 2

Here is a snapshot of the Devices.

I can perhaps guess that the older external hard drive, the 320 GB one, is maybe USB 1.

Therefore, the whole lot is dragged down to USB 1 speeds?

Gra

 

[TonyP]

Are you using a laptop? If not would be much easier to connect them both up internally and copy the data that way....

 

[Graham]

Hi Tony,

Yes, using a lappy.
Doesn't leave burn marks on the desk though.

I have one of the ext. HD plugged into 1 USB port on the lappy
I have the other one of the ext. HD plugged into another USB port on the lappy.
And the mobile dongle plugged into the other USB port.

Gra.

 

[Graham]

A bit more info.

The new 1TB drive is a Verbatim, and is USB 3
The older 320 GB drive is USB 2

Here a picture.

It's looking like it would be faster to watch the movies, rather than try copy them to this other 320 GB drive.

Gra.

 

[TonyP]

Does the laptop have USB 3 ports.. doubt it. May also be your anti-virus program interfering.. try disabling that and see what happens

 

[uHu]

If both HHDs are on the same usb controller, they will be very slow. Everything has to go via the cpu, and one at the time.
Most PCs have more than one controller, so if you can manage to get each hdd on a separate controller.... Then data would still push through the cpu, but in and out can go simultaneously.

Or maybe one of the HDDs has a FireWire port? (Firewire, btw, is much faster in this scenario, as each device is a host capable of pushing data to any other FW device)

 

[Graham]

Thank you uHu,

You go right to the top.

I stopped the copy process, and decided to use my spare, older laptop.
I plugged one hard drive into the port on one side of teh laptop, and the other hard drive into the other side of teh laptop, hoping left and right, would be run by seperate controllers.
Yippeeee, from a previous copy time of 17 hours, it has now said the job will be done in 37 minutes.
So, thats great.
Now, on my current laptop, all 3 USB ports are on the left side, all adjacent to each other.
I shall try to find out the arrangement of which 2 USB ports go to which controller, and which USB port is by itself.

I didn't know all that stuff about the one controller not being able to go in and out simultaneously, hence, why computers have more than one USB controller.

Now, like i said earlier, I shall try to work out which ones of teh 3 USB on this lappy, go to which controller.

Thanks once again,

Gra.