New external HDD, slow transfers (Firewire)

[icewolf69]

Hi all, i just bought a new WD my book (1TB) to backup my files before i switch over to an x58 motherboard. I currently have an eVGA 680i mobo, with 1394a firewire. I'm currently transferring quite a bit of media files over, and it's ungodly slow.

I'm currently getting 14 MB/sec in vista (64). Is this normal? and is there anyway to increase the speed?

thanks.

 

[marcusflack]

I too am having the same issue.
I have just moved from Windows XP to VISTA 64 Business. External drive transfer speed has slowed to around 15MB per second, I was getting 35MB per second. My Gigabit network transfer speed has slowed from 45MB per second to 10MB per second.

I have trawled the web looking into all of the various problem solving issues but no love. I have the latest service pack and all updates. This is very frustrating.

 

[jakkals]

Hi Guys,

Hope this is of some help, as I had the same issue on my installation of Windows 7 RC Ultimate x64. The driver difference between Vista and W7 is so little, so 99% of all Vista drivers will work on Windows 7.

Anyway, to get back to the issue... I also have a WD MyBook connected via firewire 1394a. Had the same issue as you guys where the copy speed is extremely slow. You can try doing this in Vista x64, so here it goes.

Multiple drivers are shipped with the OS for firewire, the one we are looking for is the "Legacy" driver.

Open Device Manager, Expand your IEEE 1394 Host Bus Controllers and Right click on your 1394 device, then choose "Update Driver Software". On the new windows click on "Browse My computer for driver software", then choose "Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer", then select the driver with the word legacy in brackets.

Easy as that! It worked for me as my speen went from 7MB to 52MB by just using the legacy drivers shipped with the OS.

Anyway, let me know if this works!

 

[Bar2D2]

I had very slow backups when I implemneted W7x64 instead of Vistax64 with my firewire disk. Thanks for the lecacy TIP 😀

How do you measure your speed for USB and Firewire transfers? 😱

 

[it7276]

The Legacy fix didn't work for me. I was (and still am) getting transfer speeds of about 5.5 MB/s. I walked through exactly the steps you recommended, even restarted the computer after doing so since another site recommended doing that, and the transfer speed is unchanged. I did notice that I now have an extra Device Manger field for SBP2 IEEE 1394 Devices, and when I safely disconnect the drive I get the yellow exclamation point on that device.

I searched the rest of the internet, and all I could find were more people recommending the Legacy fix. Any other ideas? The motherboard was originally in an HP Pavilion m8100n, and when I searched the HP site I didn't see any motherboard-specific drivers (had to search for Vista drivers, was planning on trying to run them in "Troubleshoot Compatibility" mode). I have Firewire connections on the front and back of the computer, tried both and speed was the same.

Hi Guys,

Hope this is of some help, as I had the same issue on my installation of Windows 7 RC Ultimate x64. The driver difference between Vista and W7 is so little, so 99% of all Vista drivers will work on Windows 7.

Anyway, to get back to the issue... I also have a WD MyBook connected via firewire 1394a. Had the same issue as you guys where the copy speed is extremely slow. You can try doing this in Vista x64, so here it goes.

Multiple drivers are shipped with the OS for firewire, the one we are looking for is the "Legacy" driver.

Open Device Manager, Expand your IEEE 1394 Host Bus Controllers and Right click on your 1394 device, then choose "Update Driver Software". On the new windows click on "Browse My computer for driver software", then choose "Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer", then select the driver with the word legacy in brackets.

Easy as that! It worked for me as my speen went from 7MB to 52MB by just using the legacy drivers shipped with the OS.

Anyway, let me know if this works!

 

[Xeonbuilder]

Hi Guys,

Hope this is of some help, as I had the same issue on my installation of Windows 7 RC Ultimate x64. The driver difference between Vista and W7 is so little, so 99% of all Vista drivers will work on Windows 7.

Anyway, to get back to the issue... I also have a WD MyBook connected via firewire 1394a. Had the same issue as you guys where the copy speed is extremely slow. You can try doing this in Vista x64, so here it goes.

Multiple drivers are shipped with the OS for firewire, the one we are looking for is the "Legacy" driver.

Open Device Manager, Expand your IEEE 1394 Host Bus Controllers and Right click on your 1394 device, then choose "Update Driver Software". On the new windows click on "Browse My computer for driver software", then choose "Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer", then select the driver with the word legacy in brackets.

Easy as that! It worked for me as my speen went from 7MB to 52MB by just using the legacy drivers shipped with the OS.

Anyway, let me know if this works!

I just stumbled across this post since I was having the same slowdown problem with my GRaid external drives in Windows 7 and this actually helped me out.

Thanks

 

[happyoberek]

XEONBUILDER --- if it were socially acceptable to hug you, I would do so. Although I'm running at a far reduced rate (I'm on FW800 with my GRAID) it's working for now...and until I get my backup drives installed on my W7 server, this will do. Then I'll have a couple GRAIDs for sale. Anyone interested??!

 

[kingcomputing]

Hi Guys,

Hope this is of some help, as I had the same issue on my installation of Windows 7 RC Ultimate x64. The driver difference between Vista and W7 is so little, so 99% of all Vista drivers will work on Windows 7.

Anyway, to get back to the issue... I also have a WD MyBook connected via firewire 1394a. Had the same issue as you guys where the copy speed is extremely slow. You can try doing this in Vista x64, so here it goes.

Multiple drivers are shipped with the OS for firewire, the one we are looking for is the "Legacy" driver.

Open Device Manager, Expand your IEEE 1394 Host Bus Controllers and Right click on your 1394 device, then choose "Update Driver Software". On the new windows click on "Browse My computer for driver software", then choose "Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer", then select the driver with the word legacy in brackets.

Easy as that! It worked for me as my speen went from 7MB to 52MB by just using the legacy drivers shipped with the OS.

Anyway, let me know if this works!

Hi, thanks a lot for this tip. I have a 1.5 TB WD My Book with firewire connected to a Windows 7 Home Premium x64 PC and was getting 6 MB transfer until I made this change. After changing to legacy driver I am now getting 70 MB!

Thanks again.

p.s. I tried another solution that I've read about that was supposed to affect local copies that didn't work. It was tuning off Remote Differential Compression. I am using xcopy to perform differential backups of my data to external drives.

 

[Ashdude]

The Legacy fix didn't work for me. I was (and still am) getting transfer speeds of about 5.5 MB/s. I walked through exactly the steps you recommended, even restarted the computer after doing so since another site recommended doing that, and the transfer speed is unchanged. I did notice that I now have an extra Device Manger field for SBP2 IEEE 1394 Devices, and when I safely disconnect the drive I get the yellow exclamation point on that device.

I searched the rest of the internet, and all I could find were more people recommending the Legacy fix. Any other ideas? The motherboard was originally in an HP Pavilion m8100n, and when I searched the HP site I didn't see any motherboard-specific drivers (had to search for Vista drivers, was planning on trying to run them in "Troubleshoot Compatibility" mode). I have Firewire connections on the front and back of the computer, tried both and speed was the same.

The legacy fix does work. You just need to take an extra step. Your drive is probably set for Quick removal which is on by default. This creates a redundancy on the drive which will allow you to remove it without needing to use the Safely Remove Hardware notification icon.

You can find this setting in the "Policies" tab of your Firewire diskdrive device properties. Select "Better Perfomance" and check the "Write-caching policy". Now you should be way faster than USB.

 

[Seldok]

Found a Solution!

In my case, a client had 2 external RAIDs, 2 different brands, 1 Firewire 800 the other firewire 400, Windows 7 Ultimate X64. The speed was terribly slow. I first installed the {Legacy} drivers for the IEEE devices and it did improve a little but barely. With a little digging I found a solution in the External Drives Properties.

The default Windows settings for FireWire-connected drives can reduce your External drive performance by as much as 90%. This problem is easily corrected, just follow these instructions:

1. Open "My Computer" or "Computer" from your (Start) Menu or Button.
2. Right-click the external Hard disk drive from the list and select "properties"
7. Click the "Hardware" tab.
8. Highlight the drive your having problems with from the drive list and click on "Properties".
9. Click on the “Policies” tab.
10. You will see two radio buttons - "Optimize for quick removal" and "optimize for performance".
11. If not selected, select "Optimize for performance" and click on "OK". If running Vista or Windows 7 also check "enable write caching on the disk".
12. Click on "OK" and exit.

Lighting speeds should now be reached.

This problem affects XP, Vista and Windows 7. It may improve performance for any drive connected via FireWire.

Good Luck!

 

[e2rodney]

The legacy thing certainly worked for me as I went from about 5Mb/s to around 20Mb/s but your extra tweak to optimise the external HD for performance rather than quick removal made an even bigger difference, but only at first. On a copy of some 250Gb of data it started at over 200Mb/s! I was initially amazed but over a period of 5 minutes or so this dropped down gradually back to 23Mb/s and has stayed there for the duration (2+ hours) of the transfer.

In your bullet point #11. it says that for W7 you should also check "enable write caching on the disk" - this option is not available on my copy of W7 (Home Premium 64). It just has the two options: quick removal or performance.

Any further comments you may have would be gratefully received. I'd love to have that 200Mb/s transfer speed permanently!

 

[dwmusic]

I have all the same issues as you guys. My computer got as slow as 12Mb/s with default Firewire 400 (PC)>800 (WD drive) adapter cable. Formatted the drive according to Win7 instructions, still slowed right down. Tried USB and that slowed to 30Mb/s and stayed there - the fastest to that point.

When I raised a support ticket with WD themselves, all they did was to send me links showing how to zero format the drive.

Just now, I came across this article, so changed back to Firewire again, and tried all the steps recommended in the various posts including Legacy and Optimize for performance, after which the slightly better performance of 35Mb/s was achieved for the most of the remainder of a 21GB copy. However it did continue to get slower and slower with the slowest being right at the end, a speed of 30Mb/s - overall slightly better than the best achieved by USB. I am sure if I had a FW800 card on the PC though, the results would be better.

Overall highly disappointing considering how fast the equivalent steps are on my Mac. I haven't tried a big copy yet, but imagine it would have to be left overnight.

Still I console myself by reflecting on how much worse it would still be but for your helpful advice - thank you!

 

[dwmusic]

put in a texas instruments 800 card, and that started at 100MB/s and after 5 minutes reached a minimum of 67MB/s, taking about 5-6 minutes to copy 22GB

 

[Guest]

To change the driver to legacy as pointed out worked for me. Now I can work again with firewire, it was painfully slow before and hung up. Not now anymore.

Thank a lot

 

[Paddywack0]

Tried the legacy drivers but still wasn't getting satisfactory results so after a lot of research tried this http://www.unibrain.com/products/driverapi/ubcore.htm
New drivers written specifically for TI and Win 7 64. Seem to work a dream FW400 read write speeds of around 25 - 30Mbs, FW800 speeds of around 55Mbs

Excellent!

 

[Tdawgy321]

Hi all, i just bought a new WD my book (1TB) to backup my files before i switch over to an x58 motherboard. I currently have an eVGA 680i mobo, with 1394a firewire. I'm currently transferring quite a bit of media files over, and it's ungodly slow.

I'm currently getting 14 MB/sec in vista (64). Is this normal? and is there anyway to increase the speed?

thanks.

Okay...If this hasn't been posted yet...Here is the fast and easy Fix to Firewire issues (Im on windows 7...and I'm sorry if this doesn't work out for you...this obviously MAY NOT work for EVERYONE).

Part 0.5: Make sure your drive is formatted to NTFS. It isnt nessecery, but it really helps in the long run:

( DO NOT DO THIS WITHOUT BACKING UP YOUR DATA FIRST...Or you will lose everything. )
1. Navigate to computer.
2. Find your external drive.
3. Right Click > Format
4. NTFS > Default Allocation > Click Format
( DO NOT DO THIS WITHOUT BACKING UP YOUR DATA FIRST...Or you will lose everything. )

Part 1: Insuring you have proper power settings in effect:

1. Go to Control Panel > Power Options
2. Make sure your computer is plugged in (if your on a laptop).
3. Change Power plan to "High Performance" (If this doesn't show up for you...Try creating a new profile. Desktop users shouldn't have to worry about this.)
4. Okay, click "Change Plan Settings"...Then click where it says "Change Advanced Power Settings".
5. Find Hard Drives > Click the + > Turn Hard Disk Off After > Plugged In > Change this to NEVER.

This will ensure that windows won't just automatically shut off the drive.

Part 2: Making sure your drive Properties are set correctly.

1. Navigate to Computer.
2. Find your Firewire drive > Right Click on the Drive > Properties
3. Select the Hardware tab...and then highlight your firewire drive.
4. Click on Properties.
5. Select the Policies tab.
6. Change the Removal Policy to "Better Performance"
7. Under the Write-caching policy...Enable write caching on this device.

That's it. You should notice increased write and read speeds...and your drive will no longer disconnect. Just make sure that you ALWAYS disconnect your drive by doing a "Right-Click > Safely Remove Hardware".

Cheers,

😍 Tdawg 😍

P.S.
Please leave comments if you notice any errors, have any suggestions, or just want to share some love. Thanks again for taking the time to read this...I sincerely hope this helps everyone!