USB issues

zkiller

<b>VIP Member</b>
Specs:

ASUS M3A78-T
Phenom 9950 BE
4 GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2-800
Vista 32-bit

Scenario:

I share a lot of data with co-workers and as such us go through a variety of external HDD's and thumb drives. This has worked fine for me in the past, but lately external storage devices have been getting slower and slower for me. Presently only capable of transferring data at an average rate of 850 KBps, which is not acceptable. I have attempted to resolve this issue via driver updates and have also recently re-installed windows, with no affect. This issue hasn't had any effect on other USB peripherals - everything else functions just fine.

I am unsure whether this is a software or hardware issue, but was unable to find anyone with similar issues in the ASUS forums.

Any ideas as to what might be causing this?
 

douche

Member
It's either Vista or the fact you have an AMD board. Oterwise, check to see if you have enough drive letters to use the external USB devices.
 

zkiller

<b>VIP Member</b>
I have loads of drive letters available. lol. It's not a problem of recognizing the devices. I rarely have more than one external storage device plugged in.

What I understand is that everything was working fine. It has been slowly getting slower over time.
 

Zatharus

VIP Member
Thank you for the clarification on the number of devices plugged in. Does this slowdown occur to the same extent with both hard drives and flash drives? Are both devices limited to the sub-MB rate?

The flash drives I can understand as over time they will become very fragmented with constant read-write cycles. Re-format them.

Do you have some sort of indexing service that will automatically start on the external drives?
 

zkiller

<b>VIP Member</b>
This happens with both hard drives and flash drives. I have a brand new 500 GB WD Passport here that I transferred 113 GB's to and it took two and half days with an avg transfer rate of 826 KBps!

I am not aware of any indexing service that may be running.
 

Zatharus

VIP Member
This happens with both hard drives and flash drives. I have a brand new 500 GB WD Passport here that I transferred 113 GB's to and it took two and half days with an avg transfer rate of 826 KBps!

I am not aware of any indexing service that may be running.

What kind of speeds were you seeing before and how long ago?

Do you have Google Desktop or the latest version of Windows Desktop search installed?
 

zkiller

<b>VIP Member</b>
Nope, I am not a friend of toolbars.

Depending on the drive, i was seeing about 20+/- megs or so.
 

douche

Member
One important thing to note: What do have plugged in your USB ports right now? UN-plug ALL USB peripherals (that includes printers, etc) and try again making sure NO other USB device is present. If there's NO lag or slowdown, then obviously some other USB device is hogging the bandwidth. Also, are your external HDDs and Flash drives ALL USB 2.0 compliant?
 

zkiller

<b>VIP Member</b>
I have a Logitech G11 keyboard and a Logitech MX518 mouse plugged in. Other than that, I don't run any other device via USB on a permanent basis. I occasionally turn on my printer or plug in my iPhone or iPod. And yes, all devices are 2.0 compliant.

However, it does seem the problem has cleared itself up, at least temporarily. Without having changed anything, I was transferring data at a rate of 19 MBps to the same WD Passport this morning.

I am no noob by all means, but this really has me baffled.

Oh and Zatharus, yes, it seems I am the only one experience this issue. Thinking it might be an ID10T error, are we? :p
 
Last edited:

Zatharus

VIP Member
Oh and Zatharus, yes, it seems I am the only one experience this issue. Thinking it might be an ID10T error, are we? :p

Heh heh...not at all. ;) I was wondering if others in the office were experiencing the same thing. That would lead me to believe that there was an issue with the drives themselves. But, since it was only you, and that the issue cleared itself up, that does sound like there was some sort of driver issue (recent update maybe?), I/O setting issue, or some sort of indexing program causing problems.
 
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