usb 3.0 transfer speed confusion - loosing my mind

[mike00mike]

Hi there. I was hoping someone could help me.

Here are my specs:

Acer Aspire, with an AMD A8-3820
Samsung 840 Evo SSD 128GM
8GB RAM
Win 7 x64
My motherboard has two USB 3.0 super speed ports

So I have read online that USB 3.0 can get transfer speeds of up to 640 Mbps.

I mostly transfer video files 2-5GB in size (between internal system SSD and a USB 3.0 external drive)

With the mobos stock 3.0 ports, I get a max transfer speed of around 60 mbps (between two 3.0 drives)
When transferring from the internal SSD to external 3.0 drive, I get a max of 70 mbps.

My first thought was maybe the USB 3.0 drivers were corrupt or bad, so I uninstall/reinstalled them (which didn't help) so I then thought maybe the ports on the mobo were defective.

So I bought and installed a USB 3.0 PCIe card (startech) and am getting the same speeds (average) I did make sure that the driver was installed correctly, as it came with a setup disk.

Can somebody tell me where I am going wrong?

Is it possible for me to get faster transfer speeds from my internal SSD running Windows 7 to a USB 3.0 external hard drive? If so your suggestions would be greatly appreciated. This is driving me nuts.

I don't expect to get the 640 mbps speed, but even 100 - 200 mbps would be amazing.

Any input would be really helpful, and don't hold back if I am missing or doing something wrong stupid/simple, please advise and feel free to call me an idiot.

Thanks for your help.

 

[PapaWood]

What are the specs of your external drive? I wonder if that could be throttling it? You can only read/write as fast as your slowest drive will allow.

 

[PapaWood]

P.S Nobody should ever call you an idiot. We all come from different backgrounds and comfort levels when it comes to technology. It's a vast area to cover. It is a fair question

 

[Saberus]

The spec is 5Gbps in full duplex, but the speeds will vary between devices, limited to the slowest device in the chain. This could be either drive, the SATA controller, the USB controller, or anything else involved in getting the data from A to B.

Nothing wrong with asking questions and trying to understand the issue. It's the smart move, never the dumb one.

 

[mike00mike]

What are the specs of your external drive? I wonder if that could be throttling it? You can only read/write as fast as your slowest drive will allow.

Hi everyone, thanks so much for the help.

I use a Western Digital Ultra 2TB USB 3.0 external drive. (pocket dive with no power adapter/ usb only)

I have 6 of the same hard drives I use for various things, so I have tried will each of the drives and same result.

Im not sure if this rules out the Sata controller for the internal SSD, but I have tested the transfer speeds copying video files from one external to another external. Does the Sata controller still affect these speeds?

ps thanks papawood!!!

 

[Saberus]

If it's from USB to USB, the SATA controller is not involved at all. Many mechanical drives will never saturate the connection of USB 3.0, and certainly not with 2-5GB files like you say you're transferring. Some can do a burst of a few MB by using the drive's built-in buffer cache (For a 2TB drive it's typically about 32MB to 64MB), but any larger than that and you're stuck with waiting as the drive runs the disk for reads or writes, and writing's always just a little slower than reading.