Copying Large Files

[persephone]

Hi

I just copied a 3 gig file from my hard drive to a Iomega eGo Helium 320 gig external drive, using usb, and it took over 25 minutes. Is that about right - is there a way to speed it up?

Before I started to copy the file I rebooted my computer to make sure there wasn't too much else going on. The external hard drive is new, I just formated it to NTSC, as it was formatted for MAC.

Copying these large video files takes so long and as I'm doing it for several people its taking forever!

[jagabo]

It sounds like you are using a USB 1.1 port instead of a USB 2.0 port. Are you using a USB hub? Maybe it's an old 1.1 hub? A 3 GB file should only take a few minutes.

[persephone]

hi jagabo

I'm not using a hub I'm using the usb ports on the front of the computer - which the mobo manual describe as 4 x USB 2.0/1.1 headers - which I'd assumed meant you could use them with either 2 or 1.1

I'm now just trying a 2.2 gig file using the back USB 2/3 ports to see if that makes any difference. But it doesn't look like it's going to

[jagabo]

Another possibility is that your hard drive has fallen out of DMA mode. You can use Device Manager to check the primary and secondary IDE controllers:



If you see PIO mode try changing it to "DMA if available" and rebooting.

[PSVE]

No chance there's a firewire 1394 hiding on there somewhere is there? That's the ticket.

[persephone]

Hi jagabo - in device manager I have 2 primary ide channel - 2 secondary ide channel - 2 standard dual channel pci ide controller

My internal hard drive has a sata connection, one dvd rewriter has a sata connection and another has an ide connection. When I was installing windows I didn't have a floppy and wasn't really ready for it when it asked for me to install a floppy disc so I'm assuming I didn't install the sata drivers. Although there was a bit of me that hoped things had moved along and some how I would be able to load the drivers from the mobo disc that I ran once windows was installed.

The settings on the first listed primary ide channel is PIO mode but it won't let me change it manually - settings in the second listed ide channel are (current transfer mode - not applicable). Settings in the first listed secondary ide channel is Ultra DMA mode 5 - settings for the second listed secondary ide channel is (current transfer mode - not applicable)

Hi PSVE I have another external drive that has firewire 400 so while I'm off work over Christmas I'm going to do some testing of the times the various connections take.

After I built the computer up someone on this board suggested that if I wanted to do video editing I would have been better to set up a raid, so I will be buying myself another stata hard drive for Christmas and having a go at doing that too over the Christmas holidays.

[jagabo]

My internal hard drive has a sata connection, one dvd rewriter has a sata connection and another has an ide connection... The settings on the first listed primary ide channel is PIO mode

That could be the problem. Were you copying from the IDE drive to the USB drive when you got the slow transfers?

If you can't manually select "DMA if available" or if you can select it but the computer reboots in PIO mode, the usual fix is to uninstall the driver (right click on the primary IDE channel and select uninstall) and reboot. Windows should reinstall the driver and use DMA mode. Windows includes drivers for common IDE controllers so you usually don't need drivers from the manufacturer.

I have another external drive that has firewire 400

If the problem is in your USB setup, using firewire instead will help. If the problem is in the internal drive then switching to firewire won't help.

After I built the computer up someone on this board suggested that if I wanted to do video editing I would have been better to set up a raid, so I will be buying myself another stata hard drive for Christmas and having a go at doing that too over the Christmas holidays.

RAID isn't necessary unless you are using uncompressed video.

[persephone]

Now that is much more like it - did as you suggested and uninstalled the driver and rebooted and I've just copied a 1.7 gig file across using firewire in (drum roll) 1 minute 21 seconds. Before uninstalling the driver i copied a 1.4 gig file across and it took 16 minutes via firewire.

Copied a 1.2 gig file from one partition to another in less than 30 seconds lol

Oh yes.... copied a 3.6 gig file from the internal hard drive to the external drive using usb and it took 1 minute 51 seconds a 2.2 gig file took took 1 minute 4 seconds.

I am going to bed a happy woman lol

I know by those results the USB seems faster, which isn't possible but I'll have a look at that tomorrow, as I can hardly keep my eyes open.

I'll come back the the raid issue once i've had some sleep and some time to think what i'm going on about lol - thank you jagabo very, very much

[jagabo]

You're welcome.

Regarding USB vs Firewire speed: USB 2.0's raw bit rate is 480 Mb/s. Firewire 400's raw bitrate is 400 Mb/s. But USB uses small packets and a star architecture vs. Firewire's point to point protocol with larger packets. So real world Firewire performance can be faster than USB 2.0. But this can also be effected by the drives' speed (newer, bigger drives tend to be faster), how full the drives are (the inner cylinders are slower than the outer cylinders), and how fragmented the drives are.

[persephone]

Should I start a new thread or can i just ask - is it possible to burn a dvd, using the internal dvd writed, from the external drive using the sata or the usb connection?

[jagabo]

is it possible to burn a dvd, using the internal dvd writed, from the external drive using the sata or the usb connection?

There shouldn't be any problem. At worst, you might have to burn the DVD at something less than the drives max rated speed.

[persephone]

That is really good news too... thanks again jagabo

[persephone]

Hi back again

Its been a couple of days now and things have started to slow down not to the kind of speeds I had before but I'm just wondering why things are slowing up!

I've just copied across a 1.47 gig file from the internal hard drive to the external drive (using firewire) and it took 3 minutes 29 seconds, what other things impact on the speed?

The computer hasn't been on for hours, I haven't got loads of programs running in the background so I'm not sure what it could be. To be honest I much prefer it being lightening fast

[jagabo]

I outlined a few things that effect drive speed earlier. It's also much slower copying a file from one place on a drive to another (the same partition or different partitions) rather than from one physical drive to another.

[persephone]

I just wondered why it had slowed without anything changing.... same drives (internal and external0, same cables, same computer! The only difference is that everything had been left on overnight I think I'll close everything down and see what happens when I boot up when I get home from work