USB 2 Still Slow

[contro]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware (More info?)

Hi guys,

I realise you've already seen a few queries on this, but I can't find
an answer to my particular problem.

I just bought a USB 2.0 PCI card and installed it. But I'm not getting
any difference in transfer speed when downloading mp3 files to my mp3
player. My mp3 player used to provide a pop up message when I
connected it to my PC saying that it could transfer faster, but it no
longer does that despite my transfer rates still being the same.

I've checked the device manager, and I do get something appearing
stating I have a "Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller" so I'm
assuming that I do have the USB 2 installed. The name of my Mp3 player
appears separately when connected via USB on this list as well, does
that matter?

I do not have anything else connected to the USB card.

Any ideas as to what could be wrong? I've reinstalled drivers for both
USB card and my MP3 player with no success.

Any help would be hugely appreciated!

Contro.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware (More info?)

As you have noted, you have USB 2.0 support now in your system (enhanced USB
drivers). If you have connected your player (which I assume is also USB 2.0
compatible) to a port on the add-in card you are getting maximum speed. What
makes you think it should go faster? Is it just a perception you have? Have
you tried your MP3 player on other systems? Have you tried other MP3 players
on your system?

Slow, without a comparison, is meaningless.

--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!


"Contro" <contro81@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1128036309.375036.93170@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
> Hi guys,
>
> I realise you've already seen a few queries on this, but I can't find
> an answer to my particular problem.
>
> I just bought a USB 2.0 PCI card and installed it. But I'm not getting
> any difference in transfer speed when downloading mp3 files to my mp3
> player. My mp3 player used to provide a pop up message when I
> connected it to my PC saying that it could transfer faster, but it no
> longer does that despite my transfer rates still being the same.
>
> I've checked the device manager, and I do get something appearing
> stating I have a "Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller" so I'm
> assuming that I do have the USB 2 installed. The name of my Mp3 player
> appears separately when connected via USB on this list as well, does
> that matter?
>
> I do not have anything else connected to the USB card.
>
> Any ideas as to what could be wrong? I've reinstalled drivers for both
> USB card and my MP3 player with no success.
>
> Any help would be hugely appreciated!
>
> Contro.
>

 

[crizazykid2]

there is no way that other poeple to figure out this problem, or even know if there is a problem without your computer specs and timing of usb. :?:

 

[joefriday]

usb 2.0 really is not that much faster in reality. It's top theoretical transfer rate is 60 MB/sec. USB 1.1 already had a theoretical transfer rate of 12 MB/sec. 2.0 is 5x faster in theory, not really that much faster in reality.

 

[crizazykid2]

then you have never seen it side by side!
2.0 is MUCH faster!

 

[joefriday]

No, I have seen them side by side, and yes, you are a just a "crizazykid". Go away.

 

[mesarectifier]

USB 2.0 is faster. My Sony NW-HD5 used to transfer a song in about 5-10 seconds, now it does it in 1. I can load 100 songs in about 90 seconds, thanks to USB 2.0.

 

[crizazykid2]

USB 2.0 is faster. My Sony NW-HD5 used to transfer a song in about 5-10 seconds, now it does it in 1. I can load 100 songs in about 90 seconds, thanks to USB 2.0.

pwnt!

 

[mesarectifier]

??????

 

[crizazykid2]

I'm saying your right
and the other guy is way wrong

 

[joefriday]

I'd never argue the point that 2.0 isn't faster. It was my stand that 2.0 is not as fast as it is claimed to be. Your argument is sound, with a good example. I base my findings on file transfer on a Lexar Jumpdrive, which was built for USB 2.0. With that device, I do not notice nearly as dramatic a speed increase as you have with your mp3 player. Perhaps my jumpdrive is just inefficient? :?

 

[mesarectifier]

USB I think is just a bit more variable than say, FireWire. For example a friend's camcorder - transfer even for USB 2.0 is slow, but with FireWire it's a lot quicker, same camera, same system.

You do see alot of fluctuation in transfer rates when Tom's bench external USB drives.

 

[hubbardt]

From my experiences ....

Time taken to copy a 750Mb DivX movie on USB1 - 35 minutes
Time taken to copy a 750Mb DivX movie on USB2 - 3-4 minutes

USB2 is much faster

 

[mesarectifier]

Copying to what?

 

[hubbardt]

Copying from HDD to USB stick

 

[mesarectifier]

USB Sticks are generally quite slow in the grand scheme of things anyway, that's quite a good time for transfer.

 

[crizazykid2]

USB Sticks are generally quite slow in the grand scheme of things anyway, that's quite a good time for transfer.

What are you smoking? Are hard drives faster than usb drives?

No.

Did you know that when vista finally comes out, that you can plug in a usb drive (around 2 gb), and it will put apps you use a lot on it, therefore speeding up your pc.

*this may not be the perfect explanation of how it works, but it does work*

 

[mesarectifier]

That's great, but in my experience using an internal hard disk is much much faster than using a USB flash drive.

 

[crizazykid2]

Your right...I just did a test. LOL, sorry for being a stupid.

Copied around 200 mb of files to another part of hard drive, and it took 30 seconds. It took 1 minute 15 seconds on my flash drive (2.0).

Dunno what I read though. I saw a tg article talking about 32 gb flash hd and how they were way faster than regular hard drives, plus they were silent. Can you explain this, I'm confused.

edit: link added


http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/03/21/32gb_ssd_samsung/

 

[mesarectifier]

32gb flash HD? I don't think so. Even if there is such a thing it'd probably so expensive that nobody would have them anyway. And I really doubt there is something like that.

You may be getting confused with the Gigabyte i-Ram (was it iRam? Can't remember). Anyway, that was basically an expansion board with 4 DDR-DIMM sockets on, and you could put a bunch of RAM in and use it as a super-fast hard disk. Except it required an external PSU to keep it running and at the moment isn't really useful in the real world (mainly due to the fact that to get a good capacity - over 10gb - you have to spend so much on DIMMs)

Twas tres fast, however.

 

[crizazykid2]

32gb flash HD? I don't think so. Even if there is such a thing it'd probably so expensive that nobody would have them anyway. And I really doubt there is something like that.

Obviously you did not click on my link :roll:
This is the article:

Samsung launches 32 GB Flash disk for mobile computers
Wolfgang Gruener
March 21, 2006 05:07


Taipei (Taiwan) - Samsung is first to announce a Flash storage device that aims to completely replace the traditional hard drive in some mass market mobile computers. The 32 GB solid state disk (SSD) drive comes in a 1.8" form factor and reads data at more than twice the speed of hard drives. Best of all: The SSD is promised to consume 95% less power than a hard drive.

Apple's decision to replace the 1.8" hard drive with a Flash memory device in the iPod Nano last October sparked a discussion whether Flash memory could soon replace hard drives in more applications than just MP3 players. We did not have to wait for an answer very long.





Samsung said it will be offering its 1.8" NAND Flash-based SSD in the not too distant future for mass market mobile computing applications. While the SSD's capacity of 32 GB cannot compete with traditional hard drives that currently offers up to 80 GB space, it offers superior performance and power consumption features that are likely to make the device the ultimate storage solution in some applications such as ultra-mobile computers, Tablet PCs and performance notebooks.

According to Samsung, the SSD will read and write data at 57 MB/s and 32 MB/s, respectively. We will have to benchmark such a drive in our test lab to verify this claim but if correct, the Flash disk would be about twice as fast as the latest 1.8" hard drive generation, which was measured at a read speed of 24 MB/s by the engineers of Tom's Hardware. The acceleration is most likely not enough to enable instant-on computers, but we would expect Windows computers to cut the system boot time at least in half.

Pure performance is only half the story of a SSD; the drive's light weight (15g), noiseless operation and a reduced power consumption may be even more important in most mobile applications. Samsung says that the Flash disk consumes only 0.1W when not in use and just 0.5W under load. For comparison, a typical mobile hard drive consumes somewhere between 1W and 2W of power in seek, read and write processes and between 0.2W and 0.8W when idle. Samsung may be a bit optimistic that the SSD uses just 5% of the electricity needed to power a hard disk drive, but it is clear that SSD will provide a substantial additional amount of battery time in mobile devices. In a common model that assumes that a hard drive consumes about 10-20% of the battery power, the SSD could add about 20-40 minutes of operating time in a notebook that runs about 4 hours on one battery charge.

Samsung did not provide a specific introduction date of the drive, but mentioned that it would offer 32 GB SSDs "soon." There was no detailed information on how much the drive will cost.

In a statement to TG Daily, Don Barnetson, director of Flash marketing at Samsung said that "pricing of Samsung's SSDs will be market determined, based on the cost of the underlying flash components at time of shipment. The assembly cost of the SSD is very small in comparison to the flash component cost, thus we believe it to be an attractive medium for customers who choose to take their notebooks to the next level and go entirely solid state." He mentioned that Samsung "does not expect to replace 50 - 60 GB hard drives with SSDs soon, due to flash's price premium." Intstead, the company is aiming for the sub-notebook market that typically requires 8 - 16 GB capacities. In this segment, SSDs are believed to "be cost effective over the next 12 months," he said.

However, the fact that Samsung aggressively moves into the mass storage space (see: Hybrid hard drives: Can Samsung and Microsoft invent a new market for 2007?) and Flash prices are forecasted to experience sharp drops, leads us to believe that the 32 GB device announced today will be priced significantly below (commercial grade) SSDs and hit the market in a price range between $750 and $1000 when introduced.

Flash disks that are offered today are almost exclusively sold into enterprise, military and government markets and offer higher performance and often more extreme temperature ratings than Samsung's mass market SSD. One of the few 32 GB Flash disks on the market is currently sold by Silicon Systems: The device comes in a PCMCIA form-factor and is priced around $6400. Other commercial SSDs include Adtron's (2.5") Flashpak, which is available in a 4 GB version for $546 and in an 8 GB variant for $1900.

You may be getting confused with the Gigabyte i-Ram (was it iRam? Can't remember). Anyway, that was basically an expansion board with 4 DDR-DIMM sockets on, and you could put a bunch of RAM in and use it as a super-fast hard disk. Except it required an external PSU to keep it running and at the moment isn't really useful in the real world (mainly due to the fact that to get a good capacity - over 10gb - you have to spend so much on DIMMs)

No, I'm not confused...I read that usb could speed up from a reputable source.

 

[mesarectifier]

Meh. That's the second mistake I've made by not just skim-reading posts today. Lesson learned, I guess.


I stand by the price thing, though...$6400 for 32gb??? That's $200/gb!!!

How comes everyone's saying that these USB drives are going to be speeding up Vista, and how they're going to replace hard disks soon, and yet when I use USB keys I'm always stuck waiting around (as you found when you compared HD/HD to HD/USB.

 

[crizazykid2]

Meh. That's the second mistake I've made by not just skim-reading posts today. Lesson learned, I guess.


I stand by the price thing, though...$6400 for 32gb??? That's $200/gb!!!

How comes everyone's saying that these USB drives are going to be speeding up Vista, and how they're going to replace hard disks soon, and yet when I use USB keys I'm always stuck waiting around (as you found when you compared HD/HD to HD/USB.

Yeah, the price is insane, but like all things, it will go down.

I'm with you...I can't understand how usb will speed it up computers. In fact, I just did a another test (using the same files), but this time usb to usb. It took an astonishing 7.5 minutes! However, I think one of the drives was usb 1.1 because it took around ten times longer to delete the files than on my other drive. Therefore this test is not really fair...I wish I had two usb 2.0, then I could do a real test. Do you? If you do, try doing a test of around 190 mb. Also, I conducted my hd/hd and hd/usb with a 7200 rpm drive and with my 2.0 usb.

Man I'm confused now.

 

[mesarectifier]

My experiences are with 7200rpm and 10K SCSI drives, copying to USB/HD.

10K HD>HD is real quick, 10K HD>USB2.0 is just as fast as 7.2k HD>USB2.0, I found the USB to be the limiting factor.

USB 1.1 is now totally useless. Interesting, though, that my USB2.0 MP3 player is so much faster than my USB2.0 flash drive, even same source, same files.

I haven't got any USB HDDs around to test, but I guess the MP3 is sorta a USB HDD.

It'd be great if we could have a Tom's article explaining the 'every one's an anomoly' results that I have obtained.

 

[crizazykid2]

My experiences are with 7200rpm and 10K SCSI drives, copying to USB/HD.

10K HD>HD is real quick, 10K HD>USB2.0 is just as fast as 7.2k HD>USB2.0, I found the USB to be the limiting factor.

That is a good point.

USB 1.1 is now totally useless. Interesting, though, that my USB2.0 MP3 player is so much faster than my USB2.0 flash drive, even same source, same files.

Interesting...I was using a usb mp3 player as one of my drives that I tested. I'm not positive if it was 1.1, in fact I thought it was 2.0, but it was much slower in my tests.

1.1 is not useless, but sure isn't fun to work with.

It'd be great if we could have a Tom's article explaining the 'every one's an anomoly' results that I have obtained.

Yeah it would; I would be interested for sure. PM Fredi...see what he can do. He probably has influence on tg writers.



I just did another test, and got very interesting results. I copied the 190 mb files from the 2.0 flash drive to my 7200 rpm hard drive. Amazingly, it took only 20 seconds, which is 33% faster than from HD to HD. So, I suppose it would speed up vista because it reads very fast. However, it is slow to write. I guess this would be the same with flash hard drives. I don't know if I'm right or not, but what do you think of my hypothesis?