Slow USB 3.0

[cadax]

Hello,
I have a Dell XPS 9100 desktop that I purchased a little over one year ago. About that time was when USB 3.0 came out and I had the PC loaded w/ a NEC USB 3.0 card. I am running Win 7 Pro x64 and have an i7 Extreme cpu.

I was trying to backup Western Digital internal drive files onto an external WD 3 tb drive w/ a USB 3.0 connection in the front panel. The writing was very slow- 131 kb/sec mostly and the fastest transfer speed was 441 kb/sec. I checked and I have the latest NEC driver.

Any thoughts as to why this is happening? I've tried reformatting the external drive via quick format & even that seems very slow. Any ideas? Thanks.

 

[WyomingKnott]

If I read that correctly, you are getting USB 2.0 transfer speeds. Actually, very good USB 2.0 transfer speeds. Dumb questions; are you using the USB 3.0 cable? Are there any BIOS settings that are needed to enable 3.0?

 

[cadax]

Yes- I am using the USB 3.0 cable w/ the SS designation formed on the connector.

Are there settings in the BIOS that need to be adjusted?

One last thing- since my USB card only came w/ one back panel port plus one front port, I purchased a USB 3.0 hub shortly after getting the computer. I connected it to the back port and it appeared that the transfer speed was more along what I had been expecting.

I recently had a problem a while back w/ one of the WD USB 3.0 external drives. It seemed that the lead sector head in the drive went bad & I could not retrieve any of the files on it. When it occurred, I contacted WD tech support and they believed it was a problem related to my apartment building being old and having occasional brownouts/blackouts. The WD drive was connected to the hub but the hub couldn't be powered by my UPS battery, since all 6 ports were maxed out. Since the drive was still under warranty, WD sent a replacement and that was the drive that had been running so slow. WD encouraged me to not use the hub since it was not on the UPS- that is why the drive is connected to the front port that seems so slow.